God's Pennies

In the 1983 comedy The Man with Two Brains, Steve Martin plays a young doctor who has recently become a widower. Devastated and lonely, he soon meets a young woman who, as the viewer can see, is nothing more than a cold blooded gold-digger who marries men for their money and then discards them like so much trash.

Unsure about what to do, Martin stands before a huge portrait of his dearly departed wife asking permission to pursue this new love interest, He says to the portrait, “If this is wrong, give me a sign!” Immediately the wind starts to howl, lightening flashes, the house shakes, and the audience can hear the eerie voice of Martin’s dead wife screaming, “No, no, no!”. Martin, ignoring the obvious warning, says, “I knew you’d understand!” and happily runs out to court his new girlfriend.

For three years I logged 400 to 600 miles each week selling auto parts and equipment to mechanics in the Montgomery area. Some days when I first started the job, I would hear the word ‘no’ about a thousand times. I would go home wondering, “What in the world am I doing?” I spent 26 years telling jokes on the radio every morning…I am not a salesman! The only confidence I had was the fact that I was confident I was a failure. Some days I just stayed in bed and pondered about what I should do.

One day, as I was finishing up an unsuccessful sales call, I asked God to tell me if I was doing the right thing or was I just wasting my time, the company’s time, and the time of everyone I came in contact with. As I was about to get into my car, my eye caught something on the ground. I bent down and picked it up and saw that it was a penny.

“So this is your sign?” I said as I brushed the dirt off, looked at Abe’s always stoic face and then dropped the coin into my pocket. “Thanks.” I said to myself with more than a hint of sarcasm. If it had been a $20 I had found on the ground that would have been a sign. I would also have considered a $100 to be nothing short of a miracle.

As the days passed and turned into weeks and the weeks into months I often found myself asking for that elusive sign. Sometimes the thought was still ringing in my head when I would look down and find a penny. Sometimes I found two or three at a time and one day I found 47 pennies lying in a pile on the sidewalk in front of a recently closed Family Dollar Store! It was not hard to see that God’s pennies were my sign telling me that if I just had faith in myself and what I was doing that everything would be okay.

John 14:27 says, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” That verse is a sign from God that all we have to do is relax and stop worrying. If we take care of that, He will take care of everything else.

I still find God’s pennies, at least eight to ten each week. Like the rainbow He hung in the sky after the great flood as a promise to Noah, they look up at me from parking lots, floors in convenient stores, and some places that make me wonder, “How did that penny get here?” I always pick them up. God’s pennies have a special place on my desk in a small flower vase I picked up just for them. It is almost full; I estimate there are about 1000 pennies in that vase. I once thought I should give them away, but then I realized these are the pennies God sent to me! So I’ll keep them and use them as a reminder to myself that God is good and wants me to stop worrying, relax, and enjoy the life he gave me. I also turned out to be a pretty good salesman after all.

Have you ever asked for a sign to let you know you if you were doing the right things in your life? Have you looked down today? Maybe God left a penny for you!