Insightful Moment at the Treasury

Gire's meditation on this passage is an interesting one. Instead of focusing on the widow's generosity, he turns to us at the collection plate on Sunday and reels off the litany of excuses we use to not give all that we have. I know (when I had money) that many of the ones he comes up with certainly crossed my mind: How will this be used? It's not enough to matter much. I'm unemployed; I need this more than the church... and yet every time I rode the subway I was confronted by women like this widow. Recent immigrants coming into the city from Queens with minimum wage incomes... they always gave a dollar or more to the assortment of panhandlers who worked the subway. Their own clothes were sometimes shabby, their own faces pinched by hunger, but they gave and gave and gave. What an awakening. How ashamed they made me feel, like I was some Scrooge in their midst to be pitied.

But Jesus is telling us way more than "hip, hip hooray for the widow". He's showing us another way to live, to be. Living from a place of abundance, rather than scarcity... it sounds too impractical, like so much new age garbage talk. Trust in God for your next meal? Your next rent payment? How could we ever do that?

Hmmmm... how indeed?