The Gospel of Mark tells the story of a widow who gave all she had.
Jesus was sitting in the temple near the offering box and watching people put in their gifts. He noticed that many rich people were giving a lot of money. Finally, a poor widow came up and put in two coins worth only a few pennies. Jesus told his disciples to gather around him. Then he said:
I tell you that this poor widow has put in more than all the others. Everyone else gave what they didn’t need. But she is very poor and gave everything she had. Now she doesn’t have a cent to live on.
Mark 12:41-44 (cev)
The lesson I always took away from this story was that it is the sacrificial giving that reveals how much the person gave. But perhaps it is about more than that.
Perhaps it also talks about how systems are sometimes created to make people believe that if you give a significant amount, you are being generous. Or that you should be acknowledged. Or you should get credit or privilege for your “generosity”.
What Jesus is saying is that that is not how God sees it. It’s not about the amount, but about the heart. For example, the amount can be huge for the purposes of a tax write-off and the smallest amount can be for the love of God.
So then the question is, why do I give? What is the heart behind the giving? It’s not the amount that matters, it is the heart with which it is given.
No one gives everything they have unless they have faith. The widow gave everything. She must have trusted that God would take care of her. Clearly it wouldn’t be the religious leaders she had faith in, since they were busy taking widows’ homes(Luke 20:47).
She was able to separate God from the institution and trust Him. In fact, I can also deduce from the verse that the wealthy who were putting in a lot, were trusting in the institution, since people were able to see that they were putting in a lot. This practice is probably one of the reasons Jesus taught to not let your right hand know what your left hand is doing (Matt 6:3). It is too easy to succumb to the recognition of men and women and lose our way. We become more interested in getting their approval than God’s.
The widow may have been ashamed of her offering, not knowing that God was pleased with her heart and, in fact, set her as an example to follow.