Lent 1 Meditation

It isn't often that we offer our first fruits to God...let alone give thanks.  Sure, we may bow our heads at the table, offer our gratitude for the close parking space or successful maneuvering around the slow going traffic.  Thanks overflow for triumphs in sports, individual achievements at televised award shows.  But, remembering to thank God every day...for everything we have...even the things we don't want to have see or be around?  That's not particularly natural, at least not in recent culture.  And I think it's to our detriment.  What would the world be like if we did offer our thanks to God...daily, hourly, at each moment?  How would my life be different?  How would it be the same?

But even offering thanks is easier than offering anything to God above and before all else.  There is the saying that our offering to our church should be the first check we write, rather than the last - or giving what we have left over after we pay everything else the world demands of us.  Many of us try to do that each month.  But the same goes for all in our life, not only our money.  We are called to offer the best we have to God - our thoughts, our emotions, our physical being, our health and our "things" and our everything - before we give the rest away to the demanding world around us.  But the world seems so much more demanding than God does - so much more in your face.  Sure it would be great to wake up and have a quiet time to pray - to offer my time to God before anything else.  But then my son wakes up and the coffee needs to be made and clothes need to be changed and showers to be had and breakfast to be eaten and then I'm out the door before I can even remember to say anything at all to God, let alone something nice. And that's just one day.  Compound that for weeks and months and year and even the idea of waking up early to pray slips away into the impossible dream and life continues as stressfully and hectically as ever. 

So for today, I will offer my FIRST FRUITS to God in THANKS for all he has given me - as a tiny little token for the grace he sheds on me every moment of every day.