Good morning…
She sat on our couch and said something like this: “I don’t know how to hear God. I don’t know my life purpose. I’m so anxious about making a plan and making a mistake that I have narrowed down my world to things, people, and activities that feel safe. My world has become very small and suffocating. I hate it.”
Life stories like that of Scott Harrison, who is being used by God to bring clean drinking water to every person on the plant through his non-profit charity: water, are very inspiring but they can also feel completely unreachable for many of us ordinary people. We all want our lives to add up to something of eternal value, but there are so many deep-seated, conflicting needs inside us and around us. Our pathway forward to abundant life can feel so uncertain. How do we find our way home to the heart of the God who sees us, who loves us, and who has created us uniquely for His redeeming purposes?
After our tearful, life-giving talk, I drove to the nearby Kroger. I had a short list of items needed for the new recipe I was serving for dinner. I parked our car. I walked across the parking lot. On the pavement, mid-stride, I saw a tattered, blackened penny. I picked it up and looked at the ugly, messy coin.
I knew that somewhere the penny read, “In God We trust,” but I could not see this truth clearly. I thought to myself, “This is exactly what my friend is feeling. Her trust in God has been obscured by the overwhelming complexities of life.” I held the penny in my hand and thought of her as I walked into the store.
In the midst of shopping I stopped beside the hummus, pulled out a pen, and on the back of my shopping list I jotted my friend a simple note. “”I found this penny in the parking lot. You can no longer see the truth: ‘In God We trust.’ I hear your heart asking, ‘God, what if I never find my charity: water?'”
I wrapped up the dirty penny, folded up the note, and placed it in her mailbox on my way home from the store. Then I texted her this message: “I just left a little folded up note in your mailbox, kinda like the ones passed by 5th graders that say, ‘Check the box. Do you like me, yes or no?’ You should clearly know, I like you and I love you.”
I should have added, “So does God.”
Sometimes God’s love is as big as clean water throughout the globe and sometimes God’s love is small as one tattered penny. May the unconditional love of the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, be with your spirit! (Philemon 1:25, TPT).
…Sue…
