There Is Less This Year And They Will Know

You did the page in about twenty minutes.

Names down one side, and then the arithmetic, and then the second pass where you went back and took a bit off nearly every line because the first total was not survivable.

Nobody will ever see that page. It is folded in a drawer and it will stay there.

But you have been carrying it around since, and it has stopped being a page about money and turned into something else. It has become a statement about the year, and about what you can do for people, and somewhere in there it started sounding like a statement about you.

And you have already run the afternoon. You know which faces you have decided will notice. You know the exact moment you are dreading and you have been living toward it for weeks.

There is an account in Mark of a woman and a small amount of money, and it is not the sermon you think it is. I want to show you what it actually says.

She hath cast more in than they all

Here is the line.

Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the treasury. (Mark 12:43, King James Version)

Read what He actually said, because it is stranger than the version everybody remembers.

He did not say her gift was acceptable. He did not say it counted despite being small. He said she put in more. More than all of them together, as a plain statement of fact about quantity.

You have been assuming that small means less, and the Holy Spirit is the one who recorded that sentence exactly as it was said. Mark 12:43 says the widow cast in more than all of them rather than that her little was kindly overlooked, and He did not soften it into a consolation.

So there is a real measure being used here, and it is not the one on your page.

The measure is what the giving cost the giver against what the giver had. On that measure the small thing from a thin year is not a reduced version of a large thing. It is a larger thing, measured properly.

You are giving more this year than you gave in the good ones, and it is written that she cast in more than they all by the measure God was actually using. The Spirit of God is the one who fixed that measure, and He fixed it long before anybody sat down with a page and a pen.

And notice who was doing the noticing in that story.

Nobody in the treasury saw it. The crowd saw a small amount and moved on. One person in the entire building understood what had happened, and He was not part of the room's opinion at all.

You have been watched by the one who counts it correctly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been in the room every year. Scripture has Him seeing what the whole treasury missed, and He has never once been reading the size.

The page is not about you

Now let me say something about the page itself, because it has been doing damage that has nothing to do with the money.

A page of arithmetic is a description of a year. That is all it is. Income, costs, what happened, what did not happen. It is a factual document about circumstances.

Somewhere in the last few weeks it turned into a character reference. And a page of numbers is not qualified to write one of those.

You have been reading a verdict off a document that cannot issue one, and it is written that the widow cast in more than they all, which is a judgment about a person rather than about an amount. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a woman what her own paperwork is entitled to say about her, and it is entitled to say very little.

And here is the thing about the faces you have already decided on.

That afternoon has been rehearsed so many times that the rehearsal is doing harm the day itself has not yet done. An imagined person registers an imagined disappointment, over and over, for weeks.

Most of them will not notice. Some of them will and will think nothing of it. And one or two of them are in exactly the same year and have their own folded page in a drawer.

You are living toward a moment that has not happened, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at that gathering already. Mark 12:43 puts the true reading of a gift in the hands of somebody who was not part of the crowd's opinion, and He is not waiting to see what anybody puts down.

And there is a plain thing to say about wanting to give more, because nobody is going to talk you out of that here.

Wanting to hand somebody something lovely is a good desire. It is not greed and it is not worldliness and it does not need correcting. It is love looking for a shape.

You have a right want and a thin year at the same time, and the written word honors a widow's two coins without one word against anybody who had more to give. The Spirit of God is the one who lets both of those be true at once, and He is not asking you to stop wanting.

Give it without the speech

So here is the practical part, and it is one sentence long and it is the hardest sentence in this article.

Hand it over and say nothing about the cost.

Not one word. No it is not much this year. No I wanted to do more. No small apologetic laugh as it leaves your hands. Nothing.

You have permission to keep your mouth closed about the size, and it is written that the widow said nothing at all and the account records only what she did. The Holy Spirit is the one who carries a thing across a room without it needing an introduction.

I want to explain why, because it will help you hold the line when the moment comes.

The explanation is the only thing in that whole exchange that can make it small. Left alone, a thing handed over quietly is only a thing handed over. Attach a sentence about what it is not, and the person has been told exactly what to look for.

They were not measuring. The speech hands them the ruler.

You are protecting them from a comparison they were not making, and Mark 12:43 has the value settled before anybody in that treasury had an opinion. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a moment clean, and He keeps it clean by holding a sentence back.

And there is a second reason, and it is about you.

The apology is not really for them. It is a way of getting ahead of a judgment before it can arrive. It says, I already know, so please do not think it.

You do not have to get ahead of anything. There is nothing coming.

You are not required to defend yourself in your own family, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the need to explain out of a person. The written word puts the widow beyond the crowd's assessment entirely, and He takes it out by settling the question before the room ever gets to it.