Our Journey vs Loose Change

  I never was a fan of getting loose change. Generally someone would take that change given to them and shove the coins down a purse or pant pocket. I had it all stuffed in a wallet. The teeth to a zipper was a mouth on the right side of my wallet. I would feed that pocket full of all the loose change. Pretty soon I had this brick in my pocket made up of heavy coins in a bloating wallet. It was filled of copper pennies because the other coins always seemed to get bailed out. Quarters, nickels, and dimes can actually be recycled in purchaing further items but pennies just stayed there forever. In frustration, I would empty the wallet of change hoping that it was actually more then 24 or 31 cents of pennies that was weighing me down. My friend's approach to change was never take it in the first place. He deemed it worthless. So every time my friend got his change he'd give it right back.
  How much value is in some loose change? What a dollar? Half a dollar? Not very much. I felt that way. The money wasn't worth a lot. But that all changed when my brother came home talking about special coins.
  Jason, my brother, told me about rare coins. Change that's worth twenty, thirty, or even a thousand times

more than its base value. A penny I might have held could have been worth hundreds of dollars but with out searching it first, the coin might have looked worthless. Which means, he explained, people handle and exchange what they think is worthless change but really could have been so much more. The dime or penny that was once in my hand could have been worth thousands of dimes or thousands of pennies.

  I was convinced. From that point forward I'd look at the change I handled to see its true worth. My brother and I even decided to search my parents old change to see what they were truly worth. After gathering it all we went to work. Every coin was studied, cleaned, and inspected to see what the coins real worth was. The biggest find I ever found was a miss printed penny. Its worth only 5 bucks or so but if we put that in perspective that 500 times its face value!
  I realized that there is symbolism between the value of coins and everyday people. We tend to look at someone and judge his worth from the out side. How easy it is to say this man is worth a penny or nickel than to actually take the time and find out his true worth. The world gives out labels among people. A man is a slum, a man is middle-class, a man is rich. But not every person is only worth the value the world will give them. The time must be given to find out who someone truly is.

  How often do we cast out the change given to us wanting to know what this coin really means? What stops us from taking the time to search and understand? I know Jesus Christ would not have passed on the opportunity to know who someone is. He already knows and understands all of us better than we do. I know its worth the time find out who someone really is.
  Even today I take the time to look at my change to find out whether its worth more than its value. It has become a hobby for me from my past. But finding out the worth of someone else should be a part of our every day interaction with the world. How much value does someone really have? I'll tell what Christ thinks. Everyone's value is worth more than the world itself. No soul is less important than the other and desires each and everyone of us to return back and be with him. But something that's better about people than everyday coins they don't have to be unique to help them find more worth. With the gospel, it'll make people less value to our world, priceless in the eternities of the world to come. In Jesus Christ's name, Amen.