Tuesday, June 17
- Scripture: Proverbs 3:9 – “Honor the Lord with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops.”
- Reflection: The late Larry Burkett used to say, “Show me your checkbook, and I’ll tell you what you care about most.” Where you focus your personal time and offer your resources, you reveal priorities. Resources may include money, but they also involve energy, attention, and skills.
Not surprisingly, much of our budget and labor goes toward essentials such as food, transportation, health care and shelter. This is sensible and preferable. Always take care of yourself and your household.
Beyond the basics, how do we show our priorities? In particular, disposable income and ‘down time’ or leisure time become areas in which we indulge and also invest in our values. The profile of our spending and giving of time, talent, and treasure expresses our passions and pastimes.
Now translate from the pragmatic to the spiritual. This spending and giving of ourselves can also include our emotions, our mental health, our spiritual selves, and our physical energy and wellbeing.
The tradition at the time in which this scripture was written included offering the first yield of the harvest to the temple and to Godself. It was given for holy use and for the benefit of the community. Giving also demonstrated the understanding that people had enough to take care of themselves and others, and that God would provide all that was essential for their wellbeing and flourishing. What they harvested was sufficient.
When we share the best of our lives — hearts, minds, as well as our resources — we are committing, like a gardener offering the best portion of their harvest, to trust in God’s provision. And also to engage in the reciprocity of caring for each other. - Spiritual Practice Prompt: Give a gift or perform an act of generosity today, symbolizing planting your first fruits.
Song:
- First Fruits by 70×7: https://youtu.be/HQtdbj6aOus?si=_eucczInKN1OB0w4
- Not for a Moment by Meredith Andrews: https://youtu.be/qoh26pC2RT8?si=vogqRd96p0SXXZfB
- First Fruits by TribeSong: https://youtu.be/aSBL1jlX73A?si=Y89e5I4tMsTmqdSx
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow. — Melody Beattie
June 17th Daily Devotional