The past couple of weeks I have been working in the shop my family owns in Augusta. Cleins Rare Coins. My Grandpa bought it almost eleven years ago and my dad went into business with him two years ago. Owning a coin shop was both of their dreams and the shop has seen me grow up just as I have watched the overall business grow.
So, why is this worthy of a blog post? Well, God can use anything or anyone to reveal aspects of himself to us or to simply prove a point. For me, God chooses random moments.... most of the time moments when God is one of the last things on my mind. Moments where my mind is preoccupied. But random and I go together.. we are basically best friends.
I have been working in the coin shop the last couple of weeks because the end of May means A LOT of free time that I am not use to. School Ends. Track Season Ends. Young Life Ends. All that is left in my typical routine is eating and sleeping. Because of this it was the prime time to work in the shop. I am a busybody. I love having things to do. I would rather have a packed schedule with no spare time than have nothing to do. Another reason to work in the shop was to save money for my trip to Estonia this summer. Wow. it feels surreal writing that because a little over a year ago I was creating this blog and writing my first post about my first trip to Estonia. Anyways, I don't like asking my parents for money. Never have. I like being independent BUT with choosing to do track while in school I am prevented from having a job. Don't get me wrong.. its doable. And I did do it the first year but it was too taxing on my body. So all the money I have been making is going towards my trip.
One of my tasks at the shop last week was to count wheat cents. For those of you that do not know what those are they are a type of penny but instead of being worth that of a penny they are worth four cents a piece. Fortunately, I did not have to count them by individually handling each one because my grandpa, Daddy Wayne, has this old school electronic coin counter/divider and it is tha bomb! Plus, there were over 200,000 of the wheat cents and that would have sucked without the counting equipment.
Easy job. right? Wrong. There are different pennies. Lincoln Memorial Pennies. Wheat Cents. Indian Head Cents. Etc. While unraveling the seemingly never ending rolls of pennies I had to watch out to make sure only wheat cents were being counted. If Lincoln Memorial pennies were mixed in the bags of wheat cents somebody could easily be cheated of money. Well, after getting in a groove and not seeing anything but wheat cents I stopped making sure. I got careless. I watched myself empty a coin roll of Lincoln Memorial Pennies right on top of the stack being counted. I knew I had to go through what was in front of me and pick them out. After all, Daddy Wayne's reputation, along with my dad's, was on the line. Then BOOM. God chose a random moment. I thought about it and I realized this lesson can be applied to the way a lot of believers live. We get comfortable and get careless. We may think we are in a place where reading the bible can't help us anymore so we stop diving into God's word. We might become more lenient of what we see as right and wrong. In doing this, we could unintentionally hurt God's reputation in the eyes on nonbelievers. Just like I know I do not want to ruin my grandpa or dad's reputations, I certainly do not want to ruin that of the Father's. So I guess at this point you can ask yourself the same questions I asked myself: Am I too comfortable? Am I making time for God to pour His Word into my life? Have I gotten too lenient?
That is all.
Funny how a valuable lesson can be learned from something of minimal value.
Just like God's perfection is portrayed in an imperfect world.
"Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get the crown that will not last; but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize."
1st Corinthians 9:24-27
