Dirty Pennies

Dirty pennies – my husband often finds coins in the cars he purchases to repair and resell. Long ago he decided this found money would be his investment fund, and over the years that is exactly what we’ve done. Usually he finds one or two coins, or maybe a small handful. Recently he found a lot of coins in one vehicle.

He gathered them in a box and I took the coins, mostly pennies, to the bank for changing into bills. The teller suggested I use a machine to count them rather than roll the coins. However, upon seeing the coins which were blue or dark with age, she said, ‘No, it might jam the machine.’ She told me to soak them in Coke to clean them first.

After their “baptism,” they didn’t look much better, but at least they were cleaned up. I wondered if they might still clog the money counter, so I decided to roll them as I have previously done.

Sorting Pennies

First, I sorted out quarters, dimes, and nickels. Then I began the task of counting the coins by tens and stacking them to roll. As I sorted, I soon noticed some real differences among the coins. There were a few dimes and nickels so darkened that I had overlooked them in my first sort. They reminded me of the Bible warning to beware of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Those dimes and nickels were hiding in the pennies like wolves among sheep.

Among the coins, I found many wheat pennies. I also discovered one Canadian penny, a casino gambling coin, one shiny penny with a shield on the reverse, and one with Lincoln seated on a log that I had never seen before. I wondered if these were a specially minted coin or a fake copy – but why would someone fake such a small coin as a penny? An online search led me to discover they were genuine, only minted for a short time.

Sorting the coins, I added dimes to one container, nickels to another, and laid aside the wheat pennies. After I finished counting and stacking the pennies, I rolled them into papers, 50 per roll.

Wheat and Tares

As I worked, I contemplated the pennies and how like Christians they were. After baptism, we do not look much different than before. We are still human just as those pennies were still only pennies.

The discolored dimes and nickels reminded me of non-Christians, wolves among the sheep. As I rolled the coins into the wrappers with the wheat pennies in separate rolls, I could not tell the wheat pennies apart from the others so I wrote on the outside of the wrappers containing the wheat pennies. Only God can read what is inside the wrapper to tell the wheat from the rest.

This also reminds me of the parable of the wheat and tares that Jesus said to leave growing together until His return lest even one wheat be lost by accidentally pulling it with a weed (Matthew 13:24-30). Jesus will soon gather the wheat together in His kingdom. Let’s be among the wheat on that day!

If you liked this, you may also enjoy The Lost Penny | The Parable of The Tares

Klinda Rath writes from Arkansas.

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