Luke 21 is primarily a prophetic chapter. Jesus tells His listeners about the Destruction of the Temple, Signs of the End of the Age, the Destruction of Jerusalem, The Coming of the Son of Man, a Parable about a Fig Tree, and finally the need for Watchfulness.
Whew! By the time you get through reading all those heavy prophecies, you almost forget how the chapter begins, with the Widow’s Gift. [vs 1-4]
While in the temple, Jesus spotted a poor widow. She brought an offering to the temple treasury located in the Court of the Women. She brought two tiny coins and dropped them into chests called “trumpets.” The chests were called trumpets because they were narrow at the top and wide at the bottom.
Jesus witnessed her gift and noted that “This poor widow has put in more than all of them. For all these people have put in gifts out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”
I remember an event that changed my life decades ago. I was Associate Pastor at Loomis First Assembly. I was in my office working on a Sunday School lesson. I was also drinking a lot of coffee! The restrooms were located on the other side of the foyer, and I made many trips across it that morning. As I did so I repeatedly ignored the trash on the floor left over from Sunday.
On one of my last trips across I saw an older woman, a very sweet simple lady who loved the LORD and did not hesitate to tell people of that love. She was bent over picking up the trash that I had walked past all morning. I heard the LORD speak to my spirit. “She has done more for me with her simple act than you have done with all your preparations and lesson plans.”
I will never forget His Words. I realized that like that poor widow, this woman had put her gift, all she had, before the LORD that morning out of her love for Him, while my heart had been far from Him in my arrogance thinking that my lessons for Sunday were too important to stop and pick up the trash.
I never forget that—ever. It is not the size or importance of the act before men, it is the attitude of the heart that pleases the LORD.
