Faith Amid Ashes

Terrell Carter, Pinnacle Affiliate

When done well, buildings and monuments can hold great significance for the communities they are built in. The Temple, where the events of Luke 21 took place, held great significance, and no one that looked to the Temple wanted to think about a day when it might not be around. In Luke 21 we are reminded that the only thing we can consistently trust in is God’s love for us.

Luke 21 began with Jesus witnessing offerings being made in the temple by two drastically different types of people. The first were made by rich people. The second was given by a poor woman. Jesus observed that the rich people gave from what they had left over, or what they did not really need, so their offerings were not truly sacrificial. The poor woman could not afford to give her offering, but due to her love for God and her willingness to obediently trust God, she gave exponentially more than the others because her offering required genuine faith that God would take care of her after she gave all she had.

Of these offerings, Jesus said the poor woman’s gift was more significant because she gave away what she needed, while the rich people gave what they wanted. The implication was that the act of giving something sacrificially meant more to God than when a person gave from their excess because the person who gave sacrificially showed they trusted God to help take care of their needs. I think what Jesus was trying to teach his listeners was that true faithfulness was not primarily found in the material goods they had or gave at the Temple, but in the amount of trust they had in God to supply their needs.

As Jesus and his followers exited the temple, some of them expressed amazement with the physical stature of the Temple and the gifts people had given to its construction. Jesus told them that the Temple would not last forever. There would be a time when it would again be destroyed and not one stone would be left in place. Some asked him when this would occur. He told them the time would coincide with them experiencing a season of life where they did not have physical safety because of natural disasters, threats from enemies, and fallout from broken relationships.

I think the point Jesus was trying to make in giving these examples was that, not only should their trust not be put in the Temple, their material resources, or their personal, physical, social, or cultural comforts. As in his first lesson, I think Jesus was trying to get them to understand that their faith in God would be truly revealed during hard times. Their faithfulness to God would not primarily be found in actions that occurred in a stable building where they could give from their excesses, but in the actions and attitudes they displayed while living in an unstable world filled with change. Does any of this sound familiar?

Like Jesus’ followers, our faithfulness to God is not evidenced through the physical or religious systems and structures that we participate in. Instead, it is found in how consistently we follow Jesus when life is not going as planned or expected. Our faith is best displayed when we recognize that we cannot always be in control, that we must relinquish our expectations and wants, and navigate the world we find ourselves in without blaming God or losing faith in God’s love for us and those we care for. 

Change occurs in all our lives. Not all change is good. But the One who walks with us through that change is always good. Sometimes unexpected circumstances enter our lives and change things in ways we could not have imagined. But that change never has to be the end of the story.