Desert Breeze Community Church has been gracious to our ministry and allows us to have a “Change for Kenya” jar placed at the entrance of the Church at both services on Sunday. People can place coins and bills in the jar (giving “change” for “change” in Kenya – cute I know) and when it gets somewhat filled we empty it and use the proceeds for the ministry. Since we are moving in just 6 days we emptied it and counted the coin yesterday (by the way, thank you Desert Breeze for $281 in the jar).
What struck me is when I was counting the quarters I thought I had all of them out of the stack of coins…actually I was fairly comfortable I had succeeded in what I had started out to do. I looked, moved things around, stared at the other coins and was fairly sure I had picked out all of the quarters to wrap. As I continued to sort I noted a quarter I had missed. A little later another showed up. A little later another. At the end I had many dollars in quarters to wrap when I thought I had all of them out of the pile of change.
What came to me is a lot of times, because of worry, stress, pride and many other factors I don’t see everything clearly (even when it is right in front of my face). In addition, sometimes it is hard to discern the thing I am looking for from other things because they look so much alike (all similar in nature, color, shine, but definitely not in substance) and they are very pleasing to the eye. Bottom line is we must be careful to not allow things (possibly good things) to get in the way of seeing what we are called to do (our primary purpose of loving and serving our Lord and neighbor) and possibly even allowing the other things to become our “god”. Stay focused, pray often, be discerning…find all the quarters.