With Reckless Abandon

As Jesus peers across the Temple, He looks deeply into the souls of the congregants. He wasn’t auditing their actions. Instead, He was searching their hearts and assessing their motivations.

The way He commends the widow causes me to question my own patterns of living and giving. When Jesus affirms her for giving “out of her poverty,” it convicts me to the core. It reveals how little I understand the love of Christ, that I would underestimate His provision and care for me. Life has taught me:
To risk only from a place of safety.
To love only from a place of security.
To defend only from a place of certainty.
To explore only from a place of predictability.
To dream only from a place of realism.
To give only from a place of plenty.

This is not Jesus’ plan. He calls us to live with the abandon of souls set free. In spite of our desperation and brokenness, he asks us to live generously.

We love because He first loved us.
We give because He emptied the treasury of heaven for us.
We risk because our safety is found in Christ alone.
We forgive because He forgave.
We defend the defenseless because He wielded His sword for them.
We abandon bias and prejudice because His assessment of the soul exceeds our ability.
We reconcile because He alone is judge.
We live “out of our poverty” because it is there that we can plumb the depth of our worth in Him.

It is no sacrifice to give from a full account. But when Jesus looks across the temple, He sees beyond our actions to assess our motivation and sacrifice. Jesus, our model and master, knows the pain of our sacrifice, the depth of the well from which our gifts are given.

When we give out of our poverty we tap into the limitless love of Jesus. Live from a place of confidence in Christ, not from the “safety” of self­ reliance.