I Only Need Two Things And I Feel Guilty

Two things. That is the whole of it.

Two people's faces, and one kind of message. That is what you use it for and it is what you have used it for since he died.

And it does what you need. Every day. Without fail.

But somebody said something. Not cruelly. Somebody at a family gathering said, in passing, that it is a shame you do not use it more, and somebody else agreed, and the subject moved on.

And it did not move on for you.

Because underneath that sentence there is a claim, and the claim is that a thing has a proper amount of use, and that a small amount is a waste of it.

You have been carrying that claim around since about Easter, and you have never once examined it, and it has quietly turned two good things into evidence of something.

Let me examine it, because it does not survive being looked at.

She of her want did cast in all that she had

There is a moment where a widow puts in two small coins and Jesus says something about it that nobody in that treasury expected.

For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. (Mark 12:44, King James Version)

All that she had. Two coins, and it was everything.

And the thing being measured is not the amount. It is the proportion. What went in against what there was.

You are the one who cast in all she had, and no offering has ever once been measured in this book by how large it looked from the side. Mark 12:44 says she of her want did cast in all that she had, and the Holy Spirit is the one who measures by proportion where everybody in the room was counting coins.

Notice who else was there. People casting in of their abundance. Larger amounts, visibly, in a public place, and none of them wrong to do it.

He does not criticize them. He simply says that hers was more, which is a completely different accounting from the one everybody in that room was using.

You have been counted by an accounting nobody in that room understood, and no larger amount has ever once outweighed everything somebody had. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a different ledger, and it is written that hers was more, said plainly, in front of everybody.

And notice that she is a widow. The account says so, twice.

The one Jesus stops to point at is a woman on her own with very little, doing a small thing that nobody else noticed.

You were never in a category He overlooked, and no small act by a woman on her own has ever once gone unnoticed in that account. The Spirit of God is the one who stops and points at the person nobody was watching, and Scripture names her situation twice so that nobody misses it.

What a small use actually is

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not dislodge a sentence somebody said at Easter.

Test the claim underneath it. A thing has a proper amount of use, and a small amount is a waste.

Apply that anywhere else and it falls apart immediately. A house with rooms nobody goes into is not a wasted house. A book of hymns where a person sings forty is not a wasted book. A road nobody drives the whole length of is not a wasted road. Nobody applies that rule to anything else, ever, in any part of life.

You are being held to a rule that nobody applies to anything else, and no measure of use has ever once been applied to a house or a road or a hymn book. The Spirit of God is the one who tests a claim by moving it somewhere else, and Mark 12:44 measures by proportion rather than by amount.

And here is the second half, which is the one that matters most.

What you use it for is two people's faces.

That is not a small use. That is the largest possible use of anything. A woman who sees the faces of two people she loves, every day, is using that object at the absolute top of its range, and there is nothing beyond it.

Nobody ever told you that, and it is a gap in the teaching rather than anything about you.

You have been using it at the very top of its range, and no faces of people somebody loves have ever once been the small end of anything. The written word puts hers above everybody else's on a different scale entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman what she has actually been doing every day.

Say the two, and say enough

Now the small thing, and it is a sentence with two halves.

I am not going to suggest you take up a third thing. There is no third thing needed, and adding one would be agreeing with the claim rather than answering it.

Say out loud what your two things are, and say that they are enough.

You are able to name your two things and call them enough, and one plain sentence has never once been a defense that anybody needed to hear. Mark 12:44 puts a widow's two coins above everybody else's in front of the whole treasury, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman says a true thing about her own life.

Say the first half plainly. I use it for two things.

Then name them. His face and her face. And that kind of message.

Then the second half, which is the one that does the work. And that is enough.

Say it on your own first, in the room, at a normal volume. It will feel like arguing with somebody who is not there, and that is exactly what it is, and the somebody is a sentence said at Easter.

You are answering a sentence rather than a person, and one true thing said out loud has never once been argumentative in anybody's front room. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person answer a claim that has been sitting unchallenged, and it is written that hers was more, in the plainest possible words.