She, Out of Her Poverty: Serving God When We Have Nothing

You would have to live under a rock (or in an apartment without internet) to have missed the statistics. In general, experts have observed that millenials are earning less money that their parents earned, among other sobering statistics, including, but not limited to, the rise in the average marrying age, which for women is around 27 years old, and for men is around 29. Although controversial opinions about millenials abound, it is largely agreed upon by sociologists that these generational differences are caused by economic disparity.

How has this affected those who, like myself, are young Christians trying to serve the Lord? I can say from experience that feelings of shame crop up quickly when the pressure to marry or participate in extensive ministry opportunities meets my reality: I am the age my parents were when they married, but I am single. I am the age when everyone expects me to have time to run children's church, but I am exhausted from my job and from trying to figure out how to be independent. Sometimes it is difficult for me to fathom how I can give to the Lord. I have heard similar stories from other Christians my age. Worse, I have heard many excuses among these Christians for putting off full-minded devotion to the Lord until they have the resources.

What does God do with a generation of Christians who feel like they have nothing to give?

God's Love for the Poor

An important thing to understand about God is that he does not need us and, in accordance with this, he does not play favorites based on which Christians have resources and which do not. In fact, if God favors anyone it would appear to be the poor, as the poor in Scripture are frequently the recipients of divine help and favor:

"When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue is parched with thirst, I the Lord will answer them; I the God of Israel will not forsake them" (Isaiah 41:17, ESV).

God also seeks the good of the poor through his commandments to his people, requiring their care:

"Is it [fasting] not to share your bread with the hungry

    and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover him,

    and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?

 Then shall your light break forth like the dawn,

    and your healing shall spring up speedily;

your righteousness shall go before you;

    the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard" (Isaiah 58:7-8).

"For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, ‘You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land’ (Deuteronomy 15:11).

If we think that God doesn't care about us because we are wallowing in debt, living with our parents, or in any other financial struggle, we should think again: God cares tremendously for us. The need to appear successful in the eyes of the world is a heavy burden, but Jesus tells us to come to him and exchange burdens with him, proclaiming, "My yoke is easy, and my burden is light" (Matthew 11:30).

Jesus and Wealth - An example

A striking example of how differently God sees wealth can be observed in Jesus' reaction to the widow's offering in Mark 12.

As Jesus and his disciples visit the temple in Jerusalem shortly before his crucifixion, Jesus sits down to watch as people put money in the offering box for the temple treasury. Apparently the place where people gave money for God's ministry and service was in a public place where everyone could see what was being given, and how much they were giving. Indeed, Mark records that "many rich people put in large sums" (Mark 12:41). Therefore, for the rich, the temptation to do good works for the Lord only to be seen by others would have been very strong.

Mark, and most importantly Jesus, gives far more attention in the passage to a woman in extreme poverty. He describes her marital status as well as the exact amount of money that she contributes. First, she is a widow, which means that she no longer has her husband to provide for her. Secondly, she contributes only "two small copper coins," which adds up to about 1/32 of a day's labor. In the U.S. today, assuming that a person worked all day getting the national minimum wage of $7.25/hour, that would add up to less than two dollars. In the eyes of most people, this would seem a shabby contribution.

But Jesus, calling his disciples to himself, seems very excited about this woman and her gift, telling his disciples, "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" (Mark 12:43-44).

She had almost nothing, but she offered it all. Jesus expected nothing more from her.

What Does God Expect of Us?

As can observed in the widow's offering, Jesus cares less about the vastness of our resources than what we do with them.

Take the parable of the talents in Matthew 25. Jesus describes a master who, preparing to go on a journey, entrusts his servants with varying amounts of his money. The master's expectation of these servants is that they will invest this money in such a way that it will have grown by the time the master returns. To one servant he gives five talents, to another two talents, and to the third only one talent. It should be understood that a talent is a monetary unit worth about 20 years of labor, so even the servant with only one talent had quite a lot to work with.

How did the master decide how much money to give to each servant? Jesus explains that they were given "each according to his ability" (Matthew 25:15). The master knows the abilities of his servants, and he gives them tasks that fit their abilities. This explains why, when the master returns, he praises the first two servants equally, for, though they had different amounts of talents to start with, they both doubled the amount that they started with.

However, the master is furious with the last servant, for, though he had only one talent, the servant had buried it in the ground, where it could do the least good. Even if he had put it in the bank and just let it sit there, it could have made at least a little more money, but the servant did literally nothing with it.

The parable, of course, is an analogy describing God's gifts to his people and his expectations for them. God does not expect us to use any resources we don't have, nor does he shame us for not having them. However, he does want us to recognize what we do have and to employ those resources for his service.

Recognizing Our Resources

We may be asking ourselves at this point, "What are our resources? Did we not just establish at the beginning of this blog that millenials have very few resources and are currently the favorite little joke of society?" If this is on our minds, we need to reconsider what we truly have.

In Elisabeth Elliot's book on discovering the will of God, A Slow and Certain Light, Elliot describes how God transforms simple things so that they can be used to serve and glorify him:

"'What is that in your hand?' the Lord said to Moses...The thing he had in his hand at the moment, which happened to be a rod, was the thing God made use of to work a miracle. It turned into a snake. Then God used the hand itself for another miracle.

It is a scriptural principle that divine energy acts upon the stuff of this world. Jesus had the servants fill the stone jars that happened to be standing there when he made wine from water at the marriage at Cana. He used a boy's lunch, instead of starting from nothing, to feed five thousand people. His own spittle and the dirt at his feet were the remedies for a blind man's eyes. Common things taken into divine hands accomplished eternal purposes" (101).

We need to look at what is in our hands. Are we talented? Those talents are resources. Are we passionate about something? Those passions are also gifts. Do we have any material possessions, whether miniscule or abundant? We should offer up those things to God.

Once we have looked to see what is in our hands, we should seek counsel, starting with God himself. Ask God to show you ways that you can use your gifts. Ask him to turn your common things into displays of his love to the world. And when you hear from him, obey.

"He had told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" (Micah 6:8).

References:

Elliot, Elisabeth. A Slow and Certain Light: God's Guidance. 2nd ed. Baker Book House Company, 1997.

The Bible. The English Standard Version, Crossway, 2001.