The other day I was digging through my change in the car because I was thirsty and I wanted a coke. Any other day, the cup holder would have been overflowing with quarters, but apparently I had used them all, and so I was forced to demean myself to pillaging through dimes and nickels. Every coke machine on Austin Peay’s campus cost $1.25, and of course all I could find was a buck twenty. One lousy nickel was all I needed.
So me, being the smarty pants I am, got spiritual… “God,” I said, “You are a big God, and you can do big things… but today, I’m not in need of big things. Today God, I’m in need of a nickel, and I would absolutely LOVE it if you will supply me with a nickel between this parking spot where I’m standing, and the class that I’m about to go to.
(For those of you who don’t know Austin Peay, parking isn’t that great, so it didn’t take a lot of faith for me to believe that I could find a nickel walking from Egypt to the Mass Communications Building...)
So, I began my journey, truly believing that by some supernatural force, a nickel was going to appear, like Scotty had just beamed it there from the Enterprise. That whole 15 minute walk was spent, eyes to the ground, searching desperately for a nickel. But guess what?? I never found my nickel…
I had actually forgotten about my silly fleece that I had laid before God, until this evening when I was walking out the door of my church to go home. I was saying good-bye to everyone, when my pastor stopped me, and said, “hey, wait!” He then leaned down, picked something up off the ground and handed it to me. It was a dime…
Now, there’s nothing overly spiritual about a dime. There’s not even anything remotely Godly about someone stopping to pick up a coin that they believe belongs to someone else, but there is something to be said about God providing for us. I only needed a nickel, but God provided a dime. God gave me double what I asked for!!
Now granted, that dime would’ve been nice when I had the other buck twenty, so that I could actually get a coke, but I think that’s where the lesson lies…
Too often we get so caught up in asking God for nickels, for those things that we really think we need to be happy. We even get upset and angry when those nickels don’t show up when we “think” we need them to… But maybe, just maybe, if we will give up our nickels, and trust that God has a plan for us (Jeremiah 29:11, Psalm 37:23-26, Proverbs 3:6), we will see that His plan for us was never nickels, it was always dimes… God’s plans for us are bigger than anything we could dream for ourselves!
Something to think about…
