A Little with a Lot (Friday Devotional)

As Jesus looked up, he saw the rich putting their gifts into the temple treasury. He also saw a poor widow put in two very small copper coins. “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 21:1-4

For the past two days, Major League Baseball players have been back at work for “Summer Camp,” a.k.a Spring Training 2.0 a.k.a three weeks of practice before the beginning of the strangest baseball season anyone’s ever seen. On July 23 (pandemic permitting), teams will suit up for a “full season” of 60 games instead of 162. A baseball season is usually a summer-long marathon; this one will be a sprint.

In a normal season, a 5-game losing streak is inevitable for even the best teams. This year that kind of slump could sink a season. In a typical year, a batter who goes a week without a hit will get several more weeks to iron things out; this year he could be benched. In a way that normally isn’t true until the playoffs, this season every game is important. What would normally count for a little counts for a lot.

That’s an attitude Jesus seems to apply in the story above, when he commends a poor widow (and implicitly rebukes the wealthy religious leaders of the day) because, in placing a meager 2 mites in the temple treasury, “she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” While the widow’s gift is numerically nothing special, Jesus recognizes that her circumstances make her gift far more impressive than the offerings of those with an abundance. What would normally count for a little counts for a lot.

Thanks to the pandemic, right now we are living through a time when we have all been reduced, in a manner of speaking, to some kind of poverty. For those who have lost work because of the pandemic, it may be literal poverty. For others, it is a poverty of time, as you find yourself busier and more burdened than ever. And for virtually everyone, there is a poverty of joy—when every day brings another record-setting number of positive cases, when projections point to a long and painful summer, when a vaccine feels like a distant hope, few of us are smiling our way through the day.

In such a difficult time, the natural response of most is to adopt an every-man-for-himself mentality, to hang on to what you have for as long as you can. The only way to survive, it seems, is to cling for dear life to what’s precious and let other people worry about other people. After all, the thinking goes, I only have so much to give.

But I want to encourage you to look at what you have through the gracious eyes of Christ, who looks at meagerness and sees majesty. Because right now, in a time of cynicism, fear, and exhaustion, seemingly insignificant gifts are being magnified. Small gestures of kindness are resonating loudly in this season of isolation; acts of thoughtfulness are cutting through the noise like a spotlight in a dark theater. What normally counts for a little counts for a lot.

For people whose eternities were secured on an old rugged cross, we should know better than most how much God can do with seemingly meager means. In a time where self-interest is the status quo, may you turn the tables and bear witness to grace—no matter how little you think you have to offer.