Two Coins, And He Called Them Over To Look

The porch of that church faces east and on a bright morning the steps are the warmest place in the county, which is why nobody leaves.

Four of them are still out there twenty minutes after everybody has gone, because that is what happens on the steps.

She is sixty-seven.

Inside, ten minutes ago, they read out the list. They do it every quarter and it is done well and kindly. The people who drove people. The people who cooked for the two funerals. A woman who has been doing the flowers since before the new roof. The young ones who painted the hall.

And she sat there and clapped, and meant it, and did the thing she does now, which is to check whether there is any list she could be on.

There is not. She cannot drive anybody. She cannot cook for a funeral. She cannot do the flowers because she cannot stand for that long and cannot carry the water. She gives what she can and it is not very much and it does not appear anywhere.

Six years ago she was on every list there was.

And she is not sour about it. She is genuinely glad about the young ones and the hall. It is quieter than sourness. It is that somewhere in the last two years she stopped thinking of herself as one of the people who contributes to this and started thinking of herself as one of the people it is done for.

If you have quietly moved yourself into that second category, you know nobody put you there, and you know it took about two years.

He called them over so they would have to look

Weigh it first and at its own size, because on this site the honest paragraph comes before the good one and it does not get hurried.

What this costs is not the lists. It is which side of the room you belong to. It costs you the ordinary standing of being one of the people a thing is built by, which is a real position and which you had for forty years. It costs the flowers, and the water, and the standing. It costs the quarterly reading, which is done well and which you clap through. And it costs you a reclassification you performed on yourself over two years, quietly, with nobody in the building aware it happened.

I am not calling that small and I am not putting it beside anybody else's, because on this site there is no ranking of what people carry and there never will be. Any word from God that needs your six years made lighter first is not one Scripture speaks and not one the Holy Spirit has ever carried.

And plainly, before anything else: if being one of the people it is done for has gone somewhere darker, as far as thinking the church would run more easily without another name on the visiting list, tell one living person today. Your doctor, one of the three on the steps, or a crisis line where you live, 988 by call or text in the United States and its equivalent wherever you are. Scripture asks nobody to hold that alone, and the Holy Spirit has always moved through people who stay out on the steps in the sun.

Now, Luke 21, and read what Jesus physically does before He says anything.

And he looked up, and saw the rich men casting their gifts into the treasury. And he saw also a certain poor widow casting in thither two mites. And he said, Of a truth I say unto you, that this poor widow hath cast in more than they all.Luke 21:1-3

In Mark's account of the same scene He calls the disciples over to Him. He gets their attention on purpose. He makes them stop what they are doing and look at a specific person, because otherwise they would not have seen her, because nobody sees her, because that is the entire condition of the story.

You are the one He stopped a group of men in order to point at. Luke 21:3 has Him saying she cast in more than they all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an afternoon in a temple courtyard and lays it on a church porch in the sun.

Now, the phrase itself, and be careful with it, because it is stronger than the sentimental version. He does not say her gift was touching. He does not say it counted too. He says she cast in more than they all. It is a measurement, and it is a comparison, and it comes out on her side.

But notice what He is measuring. Not the amount. He says explicitly that they gave out of their abundance and she gave out of her want. He is measuring what it cost against what there was, which is a scale that nobody in that courtyard was running and that produces a completely different result.

You have been measured on a scale nobody in that building is using. That is written into Luke 21:4, and His Spirit in you is the one who makes an ancient measurement land on a woman who has stopped putting herself on lists.

Now let me be exact about what this does not say, because two years of good things have already been said on that porch.

Luke 21 does not tell you that you are secretly on the list, and neither the written word nor the Holy Spirit has ever worked that way. I am not going to go looking through your week for a contribution to hand back to you and call it a solution, because that is the same accounting with a kinder result, and it leaves the machine running.

And it does not say the lists are wrong. Somebody drove somebody. Somebody cooked for two funerals. Those are real and they should be read out.

What it does is show you a moment in which Jesus stopped a group of men, made them look at somebody nobody was looking at, and delivered a verdict that reversed the entire arithmetic of the room.

You were never moved into the second category by anybody with the authority to move you. Scripture has Him pointing her out on purpose, and the same Spirit who inspired the account is the one who carries it to a set of warm steps.