The Widow's Mite

Wealth. Poverty.  

These are words that should convey absolute truths. You’re either wealthy or you’re not. You’re poor or you’re not.

And yet these are words which are relative.

We shared a meal last night with a wonderful woman who spends her life in a remote part of China, where she helps in whatever way she can to improve the lives of people living on the edge. I mean really on the edge. She lives in a place where people trafficking is rife, where careless words cost freedom, where freedom of movement is limited or denied, where children all receive education in boarding schools controlled and run by the state. 

She has returned to the UK for a visit, and expressed surprise at what she has found. While still abroad, she read of the tough times imposed on many here by the austerity budget and poor economy, and yet she fails to see poverty as she knows it. 

I write that while working on the setting up of a local food bank to help those who are going to bed hungry in this area. We have identified a need; she fails to see real deprivation.

Jesus sat outside the Temple with his friends. A poor widow approached the giving bowl and dropped in a couple of tiny coins. Mites. So small they failed to make a noise – the ostentatious givers made sure their gifts clanked and rattled when they put them in, so that others would notice and remark on their generosity.

The widow gave to God everything she had because she loved and trusted him.

Jesus looked at her and he loved her. He knew that she was giving away everything she had to live on, trusting God to provide for her. In a society with no social safety net, she threw herself on God’s goodness to look after her. 

Does all this talk of austerity and tightening the belt inspire people to give more to help the growing number of poor (however that is defined), or to give less because they fear the future?

Society will only be as caring as we make it ourselves. It’s not up to the government. It’s up to you and me, digging deep.

Jesus saw the widow, and he loved her.

Wait til you're asked...

Capernaum. A couple of months ago, I wandered round the ruins of this town on the northern shores of the Sea of Galilee. The Temple ruins date from the time of Jesus, and he taught there frequently. Not far from the Temple are the ruins of a first century home, which tradition has named as the home of Simon Peter. Someone – I forget who – has built a church at an angle above the ruins, so as not to cover them entirely while also declaring them to be a holy site. At the risk of being very sacrilegious, I have to say that it resembles a dog squatting over a carcass of a rabbit, say, in order to mark it as ‘his’. 

Well. That image aside, my reading this morning was from Luke 4:38 – 44. The action from those verses took place in Capernaum, in the Temple now in ruins, and possibly in the home overshadowed by the modern church. 

Familiar story. After synagogue Jesus went with his friends to Simon Peter’s home for lunch, and found his mother sick with a fever. Jesus was there. What struck me as odd this morning was the fact that Jesus’ friends ‘asked Jesus to help her’. 

Interesting. Jesus was there. He knew she was sick. He saw the need, and knew he had the power to make her well.

But he waited until he was asked. I wonder why. 

Was he mentally still in the Temple, turning over the teaching he’d just given, wondering if it had gone down well or would be rejected? Was he thinking about something someone may have said to him afterwards? 

Or was he just tired, and not thinking particularly clearly about the practicalities of getting lunch on the table? 

Or is there a principle here that is being communicated? That for whatever reason, God often waits until we bring a need to him, before he acts.

It isn’t that he isn’t aware of the need. I’m sure that Jesus, however distracted or tired he was, didn’t fail to notice that Simon’s mum was sick. But in his gracious desire to involve his creation, in this case his close friends, in his work, he waited until he was asked to do something.

I wonder what he’s waiting for me to ask him to do today.