There are stories in the Bible that we may have read many times, so many times in fact that we may take them for granted. The story of the woman who put her two coins into the treasury is one of those, I believe.
Jesus is sitting with his disciples beside the temple in Jerusalem, teaching both them and the people that would come from around the area to hear him. Looking up, Jesus saw a woman, a poor window, place two coins in the offering box there at the temple.
Keep in mind, she was a widow. She didn’t have a husband, meaning that she likely didn’t have any means to support herself. And yet, here is the woman going to the treasury box at the temple, placing her two coins in the offering. Jesus commends her for her willingness to give to God:
“Truly I tell you,” he said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.”
Luke 21:3-4
The woman has nothing, and yet Jesus is commending her for her willingness to give what little she did have! She is leaving the temple with nothing, having left the last of her funds there at the temple. She currently has nothing with which she can buy her next meals. She has nothing with which she can pay her rent. She is depending on God to provide and Jesus commends her for this.
What seems like foolishness to most of us is wisdom in the eyes of God. Many people today call Jesus a “great teacher”, but I’m not sure that they necessarily understand what it was that Jesus was teaching. He didn’t teach his disciples to be good, moral people. He taught them that they must give everything – all that they had – to God. He taught them that giving from their abundance was not enough. No, they had much more to give. They could depend upon God. They could count on him to come through.
That is the lesson that the widow understood, and that is the lesson that Jesus wanted his disciples to understand. They needed to trust God with everything that they had. They needed, in fact, to trust God with everything that they are. Their use of money was simply a symptom of what was actually happening inside of them, an outworking of their inner person, their inner thoughts and feelings. Would they give all that they had, just as this woman had done, trusting God to use the funds as he would see fit and taking care of them in the meantime? Or would they give out of their abundance, reserving their funds for themselves, managing them themselves, and depending upon themselves and their own wisdom? Which would it be?
These are the same questions that God asks of us today. Will we give all that we have back to him? Will we live completely for him, including the use of the money, the same money that he originally provided for us? Or will we hold back from the one who created us and give back to him only a portion. Will we give him a portion of our lives, and thus proportionally, a portion from our abundance?
