When Suffering is All You Have to Offer
By Alex Kondratev
Mark 12:41-44: “And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, 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.”
“A poor widow.” Gosh, doesn’t life feel like that sometimes. Half the person we needed to be for our family, friends, and coworkers and empty handed. Sometimes our emotional or physical poverty cuts so deep that we feel no possible sense of recovery, stripped to the core. In those moments our human response is to give up. Sometimes we even feel like it’s the only logical response.
There’s a beautiful secret in this piece of scripture for those who are not only widows, like myself, but for those who are spent, worn out, and suffering. There is respite and reward for those who dare to walk up to the offering plate with ripped jeans and nothing left in their pockets to offer but who are determined to give “all they have to live on.”
That was my life story 2 years ago. The tragic death of my husband of 14 months left me deep within the valley of the shadow of death. I was the poor widow, and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to walk up to the offering box of life to offer my large sums, proving that life was going well, that my dreams were still intact, and that I still had some amount of control on things. My reality was vastly different. I ate, slept, and breathed grief, “all I had to live on.”
I don’t know what your suffering looks like today. Do you just want your old life back? Is your kid’s grief breaking your heart? Are your hopes for finding your “dream job” waning as you spend yet another day at your cubicle? Are you having a hard time believing truth as you continue to fight that long lasting sin? Is death knocking at your door or that of a friend or family members?
HAVE YOU STARED THE BROKENNESS OF THIS WORLD IN THE EYES RECENTLY AND FELT IT’S STING?
Here’s the secret we see hidden in plain sight in Mark 12, your brokenness is a gift, reminding you and others that it’s not wealth, health, or prosperity that give you hope, it’s Christ. It’s a humble reliance on a God that says you can trust me with all you have, even to the point where it hurts, even when it looks like a mess of broken dreams. Two and a half years ago, all I had was a dead husband, no answers, and loneliness, but still God was calling me to come to the offering box. What I found when I went was not a God who mocked my “nothingness,” instead, as I lifted up my hands I heard, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness…for when you are weak, then you are strong.”
When we are weak, God calls us to come, so that he can be strong. Look at the scripture, of all the people coming to offer their sums, Jesus highlights the small gift of the widow. No amount of money that the widow offered was going to make her gift more substantial to God—he didn’t need that. Jesus honored the small gift not because it was large in size but large in substance. Surrender is the lesson of the offering box.
There is always something to give back to God, even when our gift looks and feels like nothing. What is God calling you to drop on the offering box today? He is calling you to put it all in, everything you have to live on, tears included. He will be faithful.
In her 27 years Alex has been a wife, a widow, and a wife again. Phew! She has experienced joys unspeakable and heartbreak unfathomable, and it is her passion to tell a good story about how God is faithful in it all!