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How do you get to know a person well? We have all kinds of relationships, don’t we? There are our passing acquaintances, those names and faces that drift into our orbit, float there a moment, then drift out again. And our casual friendships, people we’ve known for a while or a lifetime, whom we reach out and touch now and then, comforted in knowing they are there and we still matter to them. Then we have our deeper friendships with those few we can count on in good times and bad; people who really do matter to us.
And finally there are our intimate friends. Only a few, maybe only one, for whom we would give up much, maybe everything. They matter most of all.
“For whom we would give up much. . . . ” This is really how you get to know people well. You check up on their giving, because by their giving you can tell just how much they care. You find out about their charities, what they give others when they could use the gifts themselves.
The persons who matter most to us are those for whom or to whom we give the most. If there’s no gift, there’s no caring. If the gift doesn’t cost, does it really count?
So when we offer our gifts at the altar, there’s a sense in which the size of the gift symbolizes the size of our love—not in absolute dollars, of course, but in relation to how much it pinches. That’s why Jesus commended the widow he saw giving her pennies at the temple. Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on” (Mark 12:43, 44).
And when we participate in the Communion service and hear the Savior’s words, “Take and eat, this is my body. . . . This is my blood of the covenant” (Matthew 26:26, 27), we are aware of the size of his love. His “charity” pinched. He gave all he had to live on. He kept nothing back for himself.
You don’t do that for mere acquaintances. You only make such a total sacrifice for people you want in your life forever.
That’s what Jesus was—and is—saying: I want you in my life—forever.
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