Common Good

Reducing Food Waste

LentFood Systems and Agriculture Week 18 · Day 7

Scripture References

Read First

Old Testament

Deuteronomy 24:19-22

¹⁹ When you reap your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go again to get it. It shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, and for the widow, that the LORD your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.
²⁰ When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again. It shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, and for the widow.
²¹ When you harvest your vineyard, you shall not glean it after yourselves. It shall be for the foreigner, for the fatherless, and for the widow.
²² You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt. Therefore I command you to do this thing.

New Testament

Matthew 14:19-21

¹⁹ He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass; and he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes.
²⁰ They all ate and were filled. They took up twelve baskets full of that which remained left over from the broken pieces.
²¹ Those who ate were about five thousand men, in addition to women and children.

Thought for the Day

Deuteronomy builds mercy into the field itself. When you forget a sheaf, you are not to go back for it. Leave it for the sojourner, the fatherless, the widow. The command assumes forgetfulness and turns it into provision. It creates a margin where the vulnerable can eat with dignity.

After Jesus feeds the crowd, he tells the disciples to gather what remains. Twelve baskets of fragments are collected. Abundance is not permission to squander. Waste is treated as a failure of attention, a refusal to honour gift.

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In a world where many go hungry, waste becomes a spiritual issue. It is not only a matter of bins and budgets, but of habits, attention, and love. It asks what we believe food is for. If our brethren at the Table are hungry, then a careless surplus is not neutral.

Lord, teach us to leave room. Make our households and our institutions attentive, so that good food is not discarded while neighbours go without. Give wisdom for storage, distribution, and sharing; give humility to receive help and courage to offer it. And train your Church in gratitude that becomes practical restraint, so that our common life would reflect the generosity of your kingdom.

Prayer Points

Respond

Confess and resist habits of waste; ask for gratitude that changes how we shop, store, and share.
Pray for those who rely on food banks and emergency support, that help would be stable and dignifying.
Pray for wiser systems of redistribution, storage, and donation, so surplus becomes provision rather than rubbish.

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Ask God to form compassion in us for the sojourner, the poor, and the overlooked.
Pray that the Church would model a generous, waste-reducing common life as a quiet witness to Christ.

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