Exodus 23:19

This verse contains two separate commands God gave to ancient Israel. The first — bringing firstfruits to God's house — meant giving God the very first and best of the harvest, before knowing how much the rest of the crop would yield. It was an act of trust and priority, not a calculated gift from surplus. The second command, about not cooking a young goat in its mother's milk, is one of the more puzzling in the Bible. Most scholars believe it prohibited a Canaanite religious ritual, though some see it as a principle against mixing life-giving nourishment with death. This command later became the foundation for Jewish kosher laws that separate meat and dairy.

Lord, I don't want to give you what's left. Teach me to trust you enough to put you first — with my time, my money, my full attention — before I know how things will work out. You deserve the best of me, not what remains. Amen.

Nobody brings God the leftovers on purpose. But most of us do it anyway — the prayer at the end of the day when we're already half asleep, the offering from what's left after every bill is paid, the attention we have remaining after work and screens have taken their cut. The firstfruits command is uncomfortable because it asks the one question we'd rather sidestep: does God actually come first, or just after everything else? The second part of this verse is stranger, and honestly, that strangeness is worth sitting with. It's about not using the very thing that gave life to end a life — not turning a mother's nourishment into the instrument of her offspring's destruction. There is a principle buried in that odd prohibition: some things should not be mixed. Life and death. Sacred and profane. The best of what you have, given last as an afterthought — that kind of mixing matters too. What are you giving God first today, and what are you quietly saving for later?