"And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny." (Mark 12:42)
Jesus sat down across from the offering box and watched people give money. That is what the text says. He sat down opposite the treasury and watched; it was the whole activity. Rich people were putting in large sums, and the sums were genuinely large, and no one was doing anything wrong. And a widow came and put in two coins worth almost nothing. And he called his disciples over, which he does only when he is about to reorganize their thinking, and he told them she had put in more than all of them, because they gave out of their abundance and she gave out of her poverty. She gave everything she had to live on.
There is no way to read that and come away with a comfortable stewardship principle. It is not about percentages. It is not even, finally, about money. It is about the fact that God is measuring something none of us are measuring.
He is not counting what you put in. He is counting what you have left. The gift that impresses the room is the large sum from the deep reserve, and God sees it and is not unmoved, but he weighs it differently than we do. He looks past the amount on the plate to the balance in the account, and he calls it great giving when it costs the giver nearly everything. So stop asking whether your gift was generous by the world's arithmetic. Ask what it left you holding, because that is the number he is reading.