Widow-Sized: Mark 12:41-44

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Comparison can kill your joy. Some people feel inadequate, not because they can’t give or do, but they can’t do it as well as someone else. Social media, promotional videos at church or work, an uber-talented person you know, even how you used to be able to give or do—these can sometimes be discouraging if we are living by comparison. And that can lead to rivalry, pride, disparagement, dissatisfaction, and giving up. We have to find a better way.

The story of the widow at the temple in Mark 12:41-44 is encouraging. Jesus was sitting in the temple with an eye on the offering box across the hall. “Many rich people put in large sums” (41 ESV). You could probably hear the clatter of all the coins as they stood over the box, kind of like the person with the piggy bank at the CoinStar counting machine. You could tell by their clothes, the time they took, and the sound of the coins that they were giving a lot, and perhaps you or I might have seen that demonstration and thought, what does my little offering mean?

But Jesus called attention to a little widow with a widow-sized offering, two little pennies, all she had to give. Jesus said, “This poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on” (Mark 12:43-44).

Jesus didn’t say that’s what the others should have done too. Let’s read carefully and stop reading out of our insecurity. He simply said she had given more. Let’s not be reading this as though we aren’t doing enough. That reading makes the widow just one more person to envy and feel inadequate beside.

Instead, if comparison is how you are evaluating your life, try using Jesus’s rubric. If you are giving or doing your best, even if it is widow-sized, you are giving more than you think. Let your gift stand on its own two feet before your Lord and Savior.