Our Gleanings

Alright...There will be NO WAY to adequately describe for you what I did this morning without actual pictures of the event but I will give it my best shot as these are the types of occurrences that need blogged about!!

My friend, Lori, called me a few weeks ago to tell me about a "yard sale" of sorts that happens at a local grocery store in our town. Sav-Mor is a business that sells discount groceries, much like an Aldis, but inventories quite a bit more name brand items. If I understand correctly, they collect the overstock and close to expired items from a grocer called "Ingles" and then re-sells them discounted.

The owner of the store told me today that he noticed that once a month the stock was too much or the items were within the month of expiration and so Ingles was throwing it all away. His idea was to take the time to collect the abundance...put it out on the parking lot in random boxes and sell it to people for $6.00 a box.

So, if you can imagine...There are hundreds of banana boxes full of various foods all over a large parking lot and surrounding it are hundreds of more empty banana boxes for people to get and collect food in and then hundreds (or close to that) of people waiting around the outskirts for the owner to yell "GO!"

It was madness.

You are allowed to get a shopping cart and keep it along the side for when your box gets full but I have to say that this is only recommended for people who have someone to stay with the food. It is notoriously known that there are lurkers that will snatch carts of food when you're not looking.

I'm serious...I've never seen anything like it.

We bought and filled three boxes and we were shocked at what we came home with. For $18.00 we got well over $200.00 worth of food. I know...I totaled it! We made our money back in the 6 bags of coffee (most of them Starbucks) that we got! Tropicana juice...name-brand cereal...Most of it Organic items...so on and so on.

So, of course, I took pictures of all of it and while they don't do it justice, you can get an idea of our wonderful Saturday morning gleanings!

I cracked up when I downloaded these pictures because in all my excitement to look upon my reward, I didn't notice Jo in the background celebrating himself!

I must say that I really appreciate the owner of this store and his compassion for our community to think of ways to assist the needy. You know a good business man because he is always looking for the practical way in his work to leave gleanings for those in need. It's not absolutely free so it aids in helping those who partake to have to work a bit to contribute for the cost. It reminds me very much of the story of Ruth and Boaz in Lev. 23:22:

"'When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.' "

I wonder what it looked like back then when it came time for Ruth and Naomi to glean! I imagine they may have been like my friend Lori and I today as we stood on the outskirts creating our plan!