Out of Poverty

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"Then he called his disciples and said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.’" Mark 12:43-44

The sun comes up some days
and there is hope on the skyline
the horizon promises a new possibility
a new twinkle of light and warmth
a new capacity, regained strength.

The clouds surround, bending low some mornings
with their grim hollow pronouncements
all the aches and pains of this old body
scream for attention like gulls at low tide,
my poverty before me, my emptiness in evidence.

The cold wind makes the door hard to open
and I push against the bitterness and tears
formed by blinding cold and rattling teeth
trying to remember summer and lush green gardens
seemingly buried beneath the snow and cold.

The Creator fashioned these seasons
for my learning for our trusting and yet we
want to dissolve discomfort, shame our poverty
salting the ice and snow which feeds our summer
oceans, our precious streams and tender gardens.

God bends down in the cold daylight as well
as in summer's moonlight touching our ache
charging our loneliness with neighbors yet unknown
we would reject the bounty we have and God
will use our little for the feeding of the whole world.

God leans in with our poverty, taking our hands
the widowed, the lost, the broken and frozen,
God walks against the wind with us, along the dirty
streets and shattered expectations and lights
a fire of hope and trust and we give ourselves away.

God is in the giving away
the smallest act of kindness
the briefest glimmer of a smile
the thoughtless act of sharing
the tender hand reaching out
to help another, we find God.