The first real job I had after I finished school was the Executive Director of an educational enrichment program in Sandy Springs, mostly for Latino families. The program worked with students to prevent the “summer slide,” those weeks in the summer when students sometimes forget much of what they learned about reading and math during the regular school year. Though we offered the six-week summer program tuition free, each family was required to pay a $50 registration fee to participate. For some of the families we served, paying this fee meant saving and planning in order to make this sacrificial investment in their children’s education.
When many of us thinking about giving, we look at it from the perspective of giving out of our abundance. Because God has blessed us richly, we respond by returning a portion of that blessing to the Lord. We see this example in the Old Testament when God spoke through Moses and commanded the Israelites to give a tenth of the fruits of their labor back to the Lord. This model of giving is simple to understand, and we can easily do that ten percent math in our heads. However, it is possible that the simplicity of this command can lead us to the legalistic belief that all we owe to God is that tithe.
The heart of Jesus’s teaching in this passage is not that we should give all that we have to live on. It is a reminder that all we have has been entrusted to us by God, and we are to serve as its stewards. When the widow placed “two very small copper coins” in the temple treasury, she was not just giving all that she had. In doing so, she acknowledged that those humble coins were blessings from God. Even more, she demonstrated that she put her trust not in earthly wealth but in God’s providence.
For us to think as the widow did is not easy. I know that I can struggle with the idea that I work hard (or at least I like to think I work hard) for the salary Peachtree pays me. And while I am more than willing to give back to the church, I often see this offering as something that I myself have earned. This view, however, removes God’s grace from the picture. In truth, I have not truly earned what I have. Instead, I have been entrusted with it as a sign of the grace of our Heavenly Father.