Dear Team Members, Jan 16th, 2009
With the Christmas season now having come to a close and the New Year now upon us, I have arrived back in Spain, and I have gotten right back into the local ministries here. Looking back over the last month, the Christmas holidays were a very refreshing time, as I had the privilege to travel back and visit with family and friends, and even attend two different weddings for a couple good friends of mine. Coming back and visiting with many of you was such an incredible blessing, as it was an opportunity to reconnect and to simply spend time enjoying the season.
And while it was real enjoyable to have been able to spend time with everyone back home, it was especially nice to have been able to spend some time with my Grandpa, who since my last visit has been in the hospital. My Grandpa, who I am very close with, suffered a head injury and a stroke during my last stint away, and so it has been very hard having only been able to simply observe at a distance. However that being said, seeing him again was very encouraging yet at the same time challenging, and it was sad due to the shortness of the visit, yet filled with great joy because of the quality of the visit. And in spite of the challenging season that he faces, he continues to teach me more and more about my Saviour in the way he lives.
During the last visit with my Grandpa at Christmas, God spoke to me through him on more than one occasion, however one moment, which I am continually brought back to as of late, surrounds the idea of giving gifts. I was taken back to Mark 12:41-44 which talks about “The Widows Offering”, a story I am sure many of you are well familiar with. It’s the story where Jesus is watching people give their offerings, and everyone is giving amazing and expensive gifts. Finally a widow comes forward and tosses two small copper coins into the offering, and Jesus say that the poor widow gave more than any of the others because out of the little she had, she gave everything.
As I sat at the hospital during my last visit prior to my trip back, this story came to life for me. Sitting in a commons room chair, there appeared my Grandpa out of the hospital elevator bearing a few different gifts that he carried in his pushcart. To any outside observer these are the things that you would have seen; a couple of small packages of cookies, a piece of cake, and plastic glass of apple juice; nothing out of the ordinary. But, if I told you that those small packages of cookies were those that he had saved each day during his mealtime, that the small piece of cake was his dessert that he refrained from enjoying that evening, and that the simple glass of apple juice was the result of him going without during his dinner. That would change everything wouldn’t it? My Grandpa gave out of the little that he had, and what may not have looked like much to any outsider, was very truly a widows offering with self-sacrifice written all over it.
So amidst all the Christmas events, it was “the widows offering” which I found myself wrestling with. I guess for me, it’s often easy for us to overlook what seem like ordinary gifts, such as a small package of cookies, a piece of cake, or a glass of apple juice. However in doing so, we may entirely miss the heart behind those two small copper coins.
In Him,
Matt Hama
matt_hama9@hotmail.com
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