Daily Devotions

1 Where we are

Dominic is twenty-four, and his first full month's pay cleared on Friday. On Saturday morning he takes his grandmother to the kopitiam two blocks from her flat in Queenstown and orders for both of them before she can open her purse. Kopi C, kaya toast, two half-boiled eggs. Eight dollars forty. She lets him. He keeps the receipt in his pocket all day and takes it out twice on the bus. What he is checking is not the amount. For years he was the one the family paid for, and somewhere in him sits the fear that this is what he is — a cost they carry, never a hand that gives.

2 What the passage is doing

Moses is speaking to a people who have never owned a field. Forty years of eating what was given to them, and before that, slaves with nothing of their own. He tells them when the land is theirs and the first fruit comes in, they are to put some in a basket, carry it to the priest, and say where they came from — my father was a wandering Aramean. Rejoice in all the good. The basket is small, received without apology, and gladness commanded over it.

3 Taking it with you

You have been the one given to — the meals, the bus fare, the room they kept for you. Somewhere you have started to believe that until you can pay it back you do not count as a grown person in your own family. See what God does with a first small basket: he does not weigh it. He receives it and tells the household to be glad over it. Your standing with him was never bought by what you carry in. Christ carried it in for you, before you had a cent. This is not a repayment; it is the first of it, and you are allowed to enjoy it.