Two copper coins.

Where charity and love are, God is there.

Christ's love has gathered us into one.

The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. Exodus 16:31

By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?  Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. 1 John 3:16-18

 

God is sufficient.

 

Enough.

 

And in Sunday School as we walked through the very beloved and very familiar twenty-third Psalm, we paused big time on the “I shall not want.”

 

Does it mean I shall choose not to want anything outside of what He provides? Are we to reject our desires?

 

Or does it mean that each and every morning I chose to assert that He is trustworthy, no matter how my life may appear at the moment? Then I ponder how that might be true, noticing His trustworthiness, the evidence of His potent lovingkindness.

 

Jesus marveled at the widow’s bold assertation of God’s trustworthiness when she placed her two small copper coins, all she depended upon, into the treasury box.

 

Let us ask God to make us true in our love, to make us sacrificial beings, for it seems to me that sacrifice is only love put into action. - Elizabeth of the Trinity

 

God of love, forgive us when we make a mockery of love by only speaking of love. Burden us with your embodied love so that our first response may be to love with our hands and feet. May our love take on the flesh You so humbly bore. Amen.

 

Loving God, You are a trustworthy provider and protector. Even when our eyes are not on You, Your eyes are always on us. You know us inside and out. Teach us to trust You more and more, and bring us back to You when we lose our way; in Jesus’ name. Amen.

 

And the folks at AME always pause, take a deep breath, and sing Amen very clearly and together as one.