by Becky Jones
We all know what common sense is, right? We’ve received common- sense advice from our parents and, in turn, bestow it upon our children, grandchildren or anyone else who will listen.
At a recent mother-daughter banquet in my local United Methodist Women unit, we played a game that was based on the idea of how we pass along common-sense advice from one generation to the next. The women and girls were asked to write down their answers to the following questions:
We
came up with some wonderful, common-sense answers. For instance,
"Don’t go into the forest alone" and "Never
pet stray dogs" are common-sense axioms that some of our
younger attendees -- ages 5 and 6 -- considered the best advice
they’d received from their mothers.
When it came to the best advice ever given to a child, one of our older members wrote that the best thing she ever taught her children was to: "Tithe early so it will be easier when you grow up."
Having been on the receiving end of that nugget of insight, I can attest to its common sensibility. Yet the simplicity of my mother’s advice seems to have gotten muddled in the translation from her Depression-era generation to my 1960s peers. It has become what I call uncommon sense.
We are a generation of women and men who have lost sight of the importance and necessity of tithing and making offerings -– no matter how small they might be. But the problem doesn’t stop there. Our children are becoming heirs to our lack of understanding and imitators of our practices.
Looking to Jesus
I’ve wondered why financial giving seems to be a natural response for some folks and an onerous chore for others. After all, Jesus never said our gifts must be substantial or greater than the next person’s. In fact, he preached just the opposite. While teaching in the temple, Jesus observed rich people depositing large sums of money into a collection plate. Then he saw a poor widow put in two copper coins -- a mere penny. Then, as now, the conventional wisdom –- the common-sense conclusion -– was that the rich people’s contributions would do more good than the widow’s two puny coins. But Jesus taught otherwise. He said: "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on." (Luke 21:3-4)
Perhaps we lack the motivation to give because we assume small gifts don’t matter. We may be waiting until we can afford to give something substantial, something that would make a difference. Or it could be we’ve never experienced, or we’ve forgotten, how richly God blesses our lives when we give purely and simply without thought of self.
I think about that poor widow and how she must have felt when she laid down her last two coins. She was a marginalized person. Women, in general, were considered second-class citizens in Jesus’ time, and a widow was worse off than married women because she had no husband to provide for her. If anyone had a reason to hold onto her money, it was the widow. For all she knew, those two coins were the only thing standing between her and starvation.
But she must have known something the rich people didn’t. She must have had a faith so strong she literally trusted her life to God. I suspect her faith was the result of years of practice. Perhaps she believed her gift, in spite of its size, could help someone worse off than her.
The widow went to the temple to worship. She made an offering not knowing who would benefit from it, but trusting that God had great things in store for her two copper coins.
The widow walked away from the temple poorer from an economic standpoint but blessed in ways she never would have imagined. The rich people left only with their financial security. Who do you suppose was closer to God’s kingdom? Why is that lesson so difficult for us to remember?
We have incredible opportunities everyday to help people in our neighborhoods, across our country and around our world through United Methodist Women’s many channels of giving. And it doesn’t matter if we contribute two copper coins or 200 coins. Each and every gift is important. When we all put in our "two- cents worth," God blesses and multiplies our efforts to change the world.
The best advice my mother ever gave me -- how to put those nickels and dimes to work through tithes and offerings -- has helped me to see and to be part of God’s kingdom on earth. We all could use a little more of such uncommon sense in our lives.
Becky Jones is a director of the Women’s Division. She is from Kentucky Conference.