Deuteronomy 26.1-11 1 Timothy 6.6-10 Matthew 6.25-33 Today's Old Testament passage from the Book of Deuteronomy is about thanking God for the harvest and doing so in a very concrete and practical way, by making a donation to God of the first fruits of the farmer's labour before sitting down with the whole community, including outsiders from different cultures and faiths, and celebrating God's goodness together. But the celebration is very deliberately set in the context of a journey. It is the culmination of the Exodus of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt. They have come to a land flowing with milk and honey via a long drawn out period of wandering in the wilderness, and they are never to forget it. It is probable that only some of the people of Israel had their origins in Egypt, where the Bible tells us they had gone to escape famine in their homeland of Palestine. There they found work as functionaries of the Egyptian pharaohs but gradually, as their numbers incr...
A blog by a Methodist minister in the UK