THE WIDOW'S MITE

“And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury: For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living.” (Mark 12:42-44)

Those verses come from a passage of Scripture that we were studying at our Bible study last Friday night. It’s ironic that I’d been teaching and talking about that on Friday night, and then saw an example of it which touched my heart!

Our little church has been going through financial problems. We’re not alone. I heard that donations at one local Christian ministry are down 50% and at another are down 25%. It seems everybody is affected by the economy! The thing that has hit the church the hardest is the cost of oil heat. Foolishly, late last summer, we “locked in” a price for our oil deliveries for the ‘08-’09 heating season. Like many, we thought the price of oil would go even higher over the next 6 months. It didn’t. As a result we’ve been paying more than double for oil that we could otherwise have been paying if we were just paying the going rate. Except for Sunday services, most of the time the heat in our little church building is turned down and it can get pretty cold in there. SO, we’re paying big money to be cold. Well, THAT could be a topic for another day. What I really want to focus on is “widow’s mite giving”.

For the sake of anonymity, I am going to try to be as general and generic as possible as I don’t want to reveal the person’s identity. Sunday morning before service, a person showed up and took me aside. The person handed me an envelope saying, “I wanted you to be sure to get this!” I wondered what the envelope might contain. The outside of the envelope was marked, “For church oil heat”. I opened the envelope, and there was $100.

Now, to appreciate this: the person who gave that $100. is quite poor. It reminded me of when the Apostle Paul wrote that he felt bad taking a generous offering from the Macedonian Christians who gave out of their poverty...but (of course) he didn’t want to insult them by NOT taking the offering. I felt like that.
That $100. was a sacrifice. Honestly, that person may have missed a few meals in order to give that gift. That person may have NOT paid one of their own bills in order to pay that gift. That really poor person made a GREAT sacrifice. Honestly, we need WAY more than $100. to pay the oil bill right now. Again, I really felt like the Apostle Paul, and it would have been so easy to say to that person, “Look, I don’t want to see you missing meals or not paying your own bills. Please just take this back and pray for us.” But, I would be insulting that person, and acting like their gift was not important.

Mary Ann and I have had to make some sacrifices in the church this year. I don’t want to say a lot about it because it would be foolishly calling attention to ourselves. BUT, this donor made a greater sacrifice than we have! It’s very humbling. You can start to feel sorry for yourself when you have to do without a few things in a struggling church. However, when a truly impoverished person does WITHOUT in the manner of that person, you kind of swallow hard and say, “God, YOU’RE worth the sacrifice, and THESE PEOPLE OF YOURS are worth the sacrifice!”

May God bless and help that wonderful person who gave SO much. I’m sure that person doesn’t have access to a computer or e-mail, but I did send a thank you card today. My thank you note really seemed like so little, but I DID write that I understand what a sacrifice they made and that I appreciate it.

Now, for those of you who don’t understand what I mean when I mention “the widow’s mite”, Jesus and his disciples were watching people make donations at the Temple. In those days, they used all coins...no paper money...no checks...certainly no credit cards! A number of people came by and made big donations. A poor widow dropped in “two mites”. That was a very low amount of money. Some might say, maybe 2 pennies in modern U.S. currency. Well, I suspect it was maybe like 2 one-dollar bills. Even so, 2 one-dollar bills are almost NOTHING in the year 2009! Jesus commented on HOW MUCH the widow gave!

He remarked to his disciples, “Take a look at THAT. She gave more that all those people! She gave all she had to live on!”

Maybe it was two mites or two bucks or whatever, but proportionally, it WAS the biggest offering.

In ministry, I’ve found that the poor often DO similarly out give the rich. I truly have! Recently I heard a radio commentator say he doesn’t like the poor because “they don’t SMELL good!” This is a guy I often agree with, but I wanted to throw up when I heard that, and I turned off the car radio!

Thank God for the widow’s mite. On second thought, maybe it should be spelled, “the widow’s MIGHT”.