Gifts Outside My Window

"Find a penny, pick it up, all the day you’ll have good luck.”  No, I truly don’t believe that pennies bring good luck but, as a child, I pocketed each one I saw on the sidewalk.  Well ... I still do!

Today I saw a little girl who could have been me several years ago.  She almost fell over onto her nose as she stooped low and reached out her hand ... and then I heard it ... “Look, Momma!  A penny!”  Into her pocket it went!

Coins have always held a fascination for me.  I enjoy studying old coins, or those from other countries.  I can’t help but wonder what stories they could tell – whose pocket or purse they were in, for what were they used to purchase? 

Inevitably, I also think of those silver coins.  Four months’ wages.  The price of a slave.  Could those thirty coins have told me anything about Judas?  Were his hands hot or cold when he accepted them from the priests?  Did those coins sparkle in the sunlight when Judas, filled with remorse, threw them into the temple?  “I have betrayed innocent blood!”  (Mt. 27:4)  To whom did the priests hand them to buy the potter’s field?

We use money to purchase things almost every day.  The priests used money to purchase the betrayal of the very Son of God.  But Jesus purchased our means of salvation; not using money, but the Way was paid for with His blood.  How much more valuable were those droplets of His blood than any number of coins, any treasure on earth!

Then what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: ‘They took the thirty silver coins, the price set on Him by the people of Israel, and they used them to buy the potter’s field ....  Matthew 27:9, 10