“I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything — all she had to live on.”
Mark 12:43-44
Ken and I have often enjoyed participating in the annual Wheel-a-thon to benefit our local university’s center for disabled people. We fill up sponsor forms and our friends agree to contribute for each lap we complete around the track. One year I used my portable power chair, which goes faster than my old standard model.
When the race started, I zoomed ahead, passing everybody in sight. Speeding along, I noticed one quadriplegic struggling to push his wheelchair as his father walked beside him. He was pouring every ounce of effort he had into inching his chair forward. I whizzed past him every couple of minutes. I don’t know if he even finished one lap in the allotted hour, but his dad was there every minute, encouraging him on.
Somewhere around my seventeenth lap, I slowed my chair to wheel beside this young man. At worst, my arm was aching a little from pushing against the “go” switch of my chair. But here was this quadriplegic, aching and straining every inch of the way. What determination to complete just one lap!
I won the prize for the most laps and was delighted that the center would benefit from all the pledges. But as I look back, the young man’s one lap totally outclassed all of mine. Like the widow in the Bible who gave everything she had, my quadriplegic friend was the one who took first place in all of our hearts.
Father, when I give, may it not be according to my power but far beyond my power to bestow. Help me to give out of what I do not have so that You can miraculously multiply its abundance.
Blessings,
Joni and Friends
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