The Basket on the Kitchen Counter

Every Thanksgiving morning, Maria Gonzalez sets a wooden basket on her kitchen counter in San Antonio before she starts cooking. Into it she places a single orange — the first piece of fruit she buys each November. Her children used to ask why. Now they know.

Maria crossed the Rio Grande in 1998 with nothing but her daughter on her hip and a prayer on her lips. She picked citrus in the Valley for three dollars an hour. She cleaned office buildings at night. She earned her citizenship in 2007, her nursing degree in 2011. Today she owns a four-bedroom home and sends money back to her mother in Guadalajara every month.

But that orange in the basket — that is her altar. Before the turkey, before the cranberry sauce, before the family floods through her front door, Maria stands over that basket and tells the story out loud. "I was a wanderer," she says. "And God brought me here."

This is exactly what Moses commanded in Deuteronomy 26. Before the Israelites enjoyed a single harvest from the Promised Land, they were to fill a basket with the firstfruits, set it before the Lord, and recite their story: "My father was a wandering Aramean." The offering was not just produce — it was memory. It was testimony. God does not ask us to give before we remember. He asks us to remember so that our giving becomes worship.