Every Quarter Counts

I was recently listening to a message entitled “The Christian Life, Twenty-Five Cents at a Time,” preached by a pastor in California named Ric Rodeheaver. His main point was that much of the Christian life doesn’t look miraculous or extraordinary. It’s mostly lived in the midst of the mundane, in ordinary day-to-day life. This can seem hard in a culture that overemphasizes the sensational.  Rodeheaver used the following illustration which I have continued to ponder in the weeks since listening to the message:

  “We think giving our life to the Lord is like taking a $1000 bill, laying it on the table, and saying, ‘Here’s my life, Lord, I’m giving it all.’ But the reality is, He sends most of us to the bank to cash in that $1000 dollars for a bunch of quarters. And He asks us to go through our lives, just putting out 25 cents here, maybe 50 cents there: listen to the neighbor kids’ troubles instead of telling them to get off my lawn, go to a committee meeting, give a cup of water to a shaky old man’s hand in a nursing home. Usually giving our life to Christ isn’t glorious. It’s done in all those little acts of love – 25 cents at a time. It would be easier to go out in a flash of glory. It’s harder to live the Christian life 25 cents at a time over the long haul. … For most of us, it [the Christian life] means faithfully depositing/ investing 25 cents of our lives in simple humble acts, unknown acts of obedience and faithfulness, over the long haul in these practical works of service.”

We all tend to admire the sensational, don’t we? Those are the stories from the Bible that children love: Daniel in the lion’s den, Jonah in the fish, Esther before the king. Those are the missionary stories about which books are written: Amy Carmichael, George Mueller, Gladys Aylward. And we rightfully love those stories. But what about those in the Bible who were simply called to obey ‘one quarter’ at a time: the Shunammite woman who opened her home to Elisha the prophet, the four men who lowered their paralyzed friend through the roof to see Jesus, the believers who gathered together to pray for Peter when the doors of his cell were miraculously opened. And I can’t help but think of my parents and the missionary families that I grew up around whose names will never appear in a missionary biography, but who faithfully served, one quarter at a time, in the places to which God called them. Those stories, the mundane and ordinary ones, are just as important as the sensational ones.

And I ask myself, in the midst of my own seemingly mundane life, how am I spending my quarters? C.S. Lewis once wrote that “the present is all lit up with eternal rays.” In other words, right now, today, I can make a difference for eternity. In the midst of cleaning house, making meals, and raising children, in the mundane day-to-day of work or grocery shopping or eating out, we have quarters to offer to God: a joyful attitude on display for others to see, an encouraging word, a listening ear, a warm meal, a card, a prayer. It is not simply the sensational acts that God rewards. It is faithfulness to whatever God calls us to do minute-by-minute, day-by-day. And while to the rest of the world, it may look like a boring and dull life, it is the kind of life to which Christ refers in the parable in Matthew 25, when the master responds, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.”

Sisters, let’s be encouraged as we go into our ordinary lives this week. Let’s look for opportunities to spend the quarters of our time, energy, and finances in service to our King. And let’s trust God to bring extraordinary results out of our faithfulness to Him in the ordinary.

Amy O'Rear