Reader.

Are you sitting down? You might want to be sitting down for this one…

Last year, when launching the 2025 Women Around the Cross Reading Guide, I wrote about a woman I had not yet noticed in Mark 12:41–44. Jesus sits opposite the temple treasury, watches the crowd, and then points out to His disciples a widow putting in two small coins. What caught my attention was when this happened, within the final days leading up to His crucifixion. And so I included her in the Reading Guide. (free 2026 version here)​

And what did Jesus notice?

Basically, a couple of dollars. And it was everything she had.

I thought Jesus was noticing her generosity—and pointing it out to the disciples. I had followed a familiar theme of sacrificial giving, found even in my own Logos library, in today's commentaries and sermons.

But I now see Jesus was pointing out something entirely different.

With further reading last week, I discovered that Jesus is not praising her generosity at all. He is exposing a system that devours widows.

If we read just one verse earlier, Jesus warns about religious leaders who “devour widows’ houses” (Mark 12:40). Then immediately, He sits down opposite the temple treasury and watches as this widow gives the last of what she has—two small coins (Mark 12:41–44).

Many of our Bibles place a break, often with a subtitle, between verses 40 and 41. And our brains assume, “this is a different setting.”

Except it’s not.

The original authors didn’t have punctuation, chapter breaks, or subheadings. So the widow has been separated from what Jesus was just teaching—and we end up reading her story on its own, instead of within that warning.

As one writer points out:

“Jesus makes a calculated move: He plants himself within line of sight of the offering box. He sits there for a time, watching and waiting (Mark 12:41). He watches the wealthy do their thing until that poor widow comes along with her two copper coins.

Read this in light of what’s come before, and you can’t escape a clear conclusion. The point is not so much that she put in both of her only remaining coins. The point is that she had been devoured to the point of having only two copper coins” (Mark 12:42). https://www.knowableword.com/2018/04/06/context-matters-the-widows-mite/​

Across Scripture, you don’t have to read very far before widows come up. Whether in Moses and the prophets, the Psalms and Proverbs, the Gospels, or the letters to the churches, they are there. Not as examples of what to give, but as those to be cared for. There are roughly eighty direct references to widows in Scripture.

What we see with Jesus in Mark is the very thing Isaiah condemns.

In Isaiah 1, the prophet is speaking to Jerusalem and Judah—people who have turned away from the LORD. That is the root issue. And the evidence shows up in how they treat the vulnerable:

“They do not defend the cause of the widow” (Isaiah 1:23).

This is what injustice looks like in Scripture.

That’s a very different reading than the one I shared last year.

​Marg Mowczko summarizes this well here, if you want to read further:

What I am learning in all of this is how I read Scripture.

In Acts, the Bereans are described as noble because they examined the Scriptures daily to see whether what they were hearing from Paul about Jesus was true (Acts 17:11). Paul reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead (Acts 17:2–3).

We have to remember the Bereans used only the Old Testament. They did not have the New Testament. But they knew God and His Word well enough to recognize that what Paul was saying, Jesus is aligned with who God is. And as a result, many believed in Jesus (Acts 17:12), including a number of prominent Greek women and many men.

That’s what I’m taking more seriously.

I assumed what I had read before was correct, and it resonated with me. I love a good generosity story. And God does call us to generosity. But that is not what Jesus is pointing out here.

He is pointing out injustice.

That may be the key.

If we understood God's heart for the vulnerable and lived that out, would more people see Jesus?

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What’s standing out to you? I'd love to hear from you!

He is Risen!