I’m not sure why I
bothered to pick up the penny from the dirt along the curb. I don’t usually
waste energy troubling myself for pennies. Perhaps I stopped because I needed
to catch my breath. Heat shimmered off the asphalt in the mid-day sun and my
sweat-soaked T-shirt clung like a second skin. Only 20 minutes into my daily
jogging routine and I felt like falling onto the nearest shaded lawn.
Perhaps I stopped because I can’t escape half-buried memories of my mother’s lessons about money. She taught me the value of pennies years ago. Dad left us when I was five, and Mom, my sister and I skirted the edge of poverty for years afterward. I still remember her searching through drawers and pockets for so much as a few cents. Pennies were as valuable to us in those days as ten-dollar bills – and more readily available.
Whatever the reason, I held the coin until I returned home and tossed it onto the table by the front door. By the time I’d pulled off my running shoes, it had slipped from my mind. I couldn’t have known God was about to use that near-valueless coin to teach me a lesson in spiritual investments.
That evening I opened the Scriptures and turned to the place I’d left off the day before. My eyes skimmed the familiar verses of 1 Corinthians 5 and moved across the page to chapter 6. Then verse 9:
“Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
Talk about dirty pennies. Some of the men and women living in Corinth were rolling around in the dung-heap of life. It would be easy to conclude no one – especially God – would waste the energy to pick them out of the muck.
Perhaps I stopped because I can’t escape half-buried memories of my mother’s lessons about money. She taught me the value of pennies years ago. Dad left us when I was five, and Mom, my sister and I skirted the edge of poverty for years afterward. I still remember her searching through drawers and pockets for so much as a few cents. Pennies were as valuable to us in those days as ten-dollar bills – and more readily available.
Whatever the reason, I held the coin until I returned home and tossed it onto the table by the front door. By the time I’d pulled off my running shoes, it had slipped from my mind. I couldn’t have known God was about to use that near-valueless coin to teach me a lesson in spiritual investments.
That evening I opened the Scriptures and turned to the place I’d left off the day before. My eyes skimmed the familiar verses of 1 Corinthians 5 and moved across the page to chapter 6. Then verse 9:
“Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9-10).
Talk about dirty pennies. Some of the men and women living in Corinth were rolling around in the dung-heap of life. It would be easy to conclude no one – especially God – would waste the energy to pick them out of the muck.
That would be a
wrong conclusion. The next verse continues, “And that is what some of you
were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name
of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians
6:11).
God is in the business of transforming dirty coins into spotless crowns, and history overflows with examples. Saul is one. The first century religious zealot burned with murderous rage against Christians. He hated their worship, loathed their gatherings and despised their Messiah. He dragged followers of Christ from their homes and tossed them into dungeons. When a mob gathered to murder Christ’s disciples, Saul stood by and watched with approval.
Then Saul – better known as Paul – met Christ, and the persecutor became the apostle. The man who tried to destroy the Christian faith now proclaimed it as mankind’s only hope for peace, forgiveness and eternal life. Nearly one half of the New Testament came from his pen. Millions of men and women have experienced life-transformation because of his letters of challenge, comfort, warning and exhortation.
Francesco Bernadone is another example. The son of a wealthy businessman, Francesco enjoyed a rich and easy childhood. But wealth and ease ate like a cancer at his moral foundation and he whirled through a dizzying lifestyle of wild parties and women.
Then God picked the dirty penny from life’s garbage heap, and Francesco Bernadone – better known as Francis of Assisi – devoted himself to the poor, ministering to them in Christ’s name.
John Newton is yet another example. An 18th century slave-trader, Newton packed human cargo into the bowels of his ship bound for the Americas. Many of the slaves, half-starved and surrounded by human waste and disease, died enroute. Newton, however, considered the loss merely an unfortunate business expense.
Then Christ grabbed hold of him. Shortly thereafter, Newton resigned his ship and devoted himself to serve the One he’d so long rejected. Christians around the world – many of whom are descendants of Newton’s slaves – still sing hymns the former slave-trader wrote to honor Christ. You might recognize the words to one of those hymns:
“Amazing grace/how sweet the sound/that saved a wretch like me/I once was lost, but now am found/was blind, but now I see.”
Dr. Bernard Nathanson is our final illustration of God’s mercy. Perhaps the most infamous champion of abortion during the 1960's and early 1970's, Nathanson co-founded the National Abortion Rights Action League in 1968 and performed or supervised more than 60,000 abortions. Nearly single-handedly, he helped shape the political and social landscape that made the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision possible.
God is in the business of transforming dirty coins into spotless crowns, and history overflows with examples. Saul is one. The first century religious zealot burned with murderous rage against Christians. He hated their worship, loathed their gatherings and despised their Messiah. He dragged followers of Christ from their homes and tossed them into dungeons. When a mob gathered to murder Christ’s disciples, Saul stood by and watched with approval.
Then Saul – better known as Paul – met Christ, and the persecutor became the apostle. The man who tried to destroy the Christian faith now proclaimed it as mankind’s only hope for peace, forgiveness and eternal life. Nearly one half of the New Testament came from his pen. Millions of men and women have experienced life-transformation because of his letters of challenge, comfort, warning and exhortation.
Francesco Bernadone is another example. The son of a wealthy businessman, Francesco enjoyed a rich and easy childhood. But wealth and ease ate like a cancer at his moral foundation and he whirled through a dizzying lifestyle of wild parties and women.
Then God picked the dirty penny from life’s garbage heap, and Francesco Bernadone – better known as Francis of Assisi – devoted himself to the poor, ministering to them in Christ’s name.
John Newton is yet another example. An 18th century slave-trader, Newton packed human cargo into the bowels of his ship bound for the Americas. Many of the slaves, half-starved and surrounded by human waste and disease, died enroute. Newton, however, considered the loss merely an unfortunate business expense.
Then Christ grabbed hold of him. Shortly thereafter, Newton resigned his ship and devoted himself to serve the One he’d so long rejected. Christians around the world – many of whom are descendants of Newton’s slaves – still sing hymns the former slave-trader wrote to honor Christ. You might recognize the words to one of those hymns:
“Amazing grace/how sweet the sound/that saved a wretch like me/I once was lost, but now am found/was blind, but now I see.”
Dr. Bernard Nathanson is our final illustration of God’s mercy. Perhaps the most infamous champion of abortion during the 1960's and early 1970's, Nathanson co-founded the National Abortion Rights Action League in 1968 and performed or supervised more than 60,000 abortions. Nearly single-handedly, he helped shape the political and social landscape that made the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision possible.
But even he was not so deeply mired in sin’s quagmire that God did not reach into Nathanson’s gutter and pick him up. Through the prayers and ministry of Christians, Nathanson repented of his sins, received complete forgiveness and became a child of God. Though he could never undo the horror he helped create, he worked tirelessly until the day of his death in 2011 to protect the unborn from the fate he brought to others.
Who can ever understand the richness of God’s unfailing and unconditional love? Like the Prodigal’s Father in Luke 15, God scans the horizon and looks for those lost in life’s decay. No sparrow is so fallen, no coin so lost, no sheep so wayward that the heavenly Father won’t bend down, pick them up and carry them in his hand. Murderers, drunkards, adulterers, blasphemers . . . . the Church is full of the evidence of changed lives.
But that should surprise no one. Where else but in God’s hands can dirty pennies become spotless crowns?
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