One of the “fun” things about salvage operations in your own house is discovering treasure. In fact everything you find that has a chance of survival is a treasure. And from watching Chris’ reactions, I learned that even if it is consigned to the huge heap of rubble in the front yard, it was, and is in our hearts, still a treasure. But if it has a chance, well, that’s cause for celebration. We learned early on that plastic repelled mold best, but just about anything metal had a chance, if it didn’t succumb to rust. And what is the basic currency of our nation forged in? OK, I know it’s mainly paper, but a lot of money is forged from metal, right? Besides, we were a lot more likely at our house to find the metal-type money than the paper type, even without a flood.
One of our fun little pastimes has been collecting the spare change in our pockets and saving it up for a vacation. We have never achieved the vacation part, but we did have one of those Pepsi twelve-pack boxes full of coins (mostly pennies), all wrapped up and ready to take to the bank. Only I never got around to taking them. So they experienced our five feet of water from the floor in a closet. And they weren’t alone. As we rummaged through our own personal pile of junk, we often found a quarter her or seventeen pennies there. It got to be a joke. Whenever coins were unearthed, I would start singing, “Money! Money-money-money-money-money!” Or something along those lines. My creativity has been grossly damaged, you know. My ukuleles were all drowned. It helped to celebrate anything, so here was another chance.
The next phase of reclamation involving the precious coins was washing them – “laundering the money,” so to speak. The small random finds were fairly easy to wash in the sink, so I volunteered to take on the task of laundering the box of rolled coins from the closet. They were now living in a large garbage bag, hermetically sealed, as it were, from further incursion by the elements. One handful at a time went into the Rubbermaid bowl and under the faucet. Then came spreading them out on dishtowels to dry. It didn’t take long for the process to get old, so I decided to improvise. I filled up the bowl with coins and water. Then I shook it around, mixed them up, changed the water a few times, and then put them out to dry. It went a lot faster my way. But the “putting them out to dry” was not as easy as I thought it would be.
See, the quarters, nickels and dimes were fine. They fell nicely onto the towel and began sunning in the glow of the kitchen lights. I didn’t even have to remove their paper roller tubes. They were gone, disintegrated into nothingness by the crush of the flood waters. But then there were the pennies. I don’t know much about chemical reaction and metals and salt and chemistry stuff. Maybe I can ask an SCA student for help on this one. But the pennies were totally different. Their paper rollers were intact and difficult to scrape off. And when I finally got the paper removed, the pennies insisted on sticking together. Six together, then two, then four, then three. I found only two sure-fire ways to get them apart. One was to hold them on their side with one hand and give the stack a good smack with a nickel. That usually worked. When it didn’t, I had to resort to Plan B. I laid out a nickel on the towel (careful, of course not to harm the underlying countertop). I raised the offending, stuck-pennies pile in my other hand and threw it onto the nickel! The result was usually pennies flying in every direction. Sometimes (especially when only two were stuck) it took three or four tries, but I managed to get them apart and set out to dry with their silver counterparts.
Are you ready for the lesson I learned from all this money laundering? Christians are called to be pennies. The masks the world wears are fake and easily disintegrate when tough times come. Not so with Believers. We have discovered a community where it is safe to be real, to be just who we are – dirt, grime, Red Cross meal, and all. We are not always the ones who look the best to the world, especially not after a day of shoveling mud, but we can stick together. And finally, the more intimate the relationship between believers, the stronger the bond, the more powerful will be their position when they stand before the world in testimony or before God in prayer. Be a penny!
In John 17:22-23, Jesus prays for us: “I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”
Father, help me be content as a penny. And help me hang on - stick together – with other Believers. We need each other. Amen.
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