Patience for the Penny
It can go a lot farther than you'd think
I saw a question on social media the other day that asked: would you rather have one million dollars today, or a penny that doubles every day for 30 days?
At first glance, I thought the million dollars seemed obvious.
I mean, it’s an instant one million dollars!
I imagined allll the things I could do with that money at my fingertips—all the things I could do that day!—all while a different version of me sat with her one penny.
After a week, million dollar me might have planned and booked the trip of a lifetime, bought a new computer, maybe even put a down payment on a house, while penny me would be sitting with a measly 64 cents to her name.
Even after two weeks, penny me would still only been holding 81 dollars.
I thought about what it might feel like to be in a group of people who were all asked the same question.
What would it be like to pick the penny and watch as your friends lived lavishly? Would it feel foolish? Would you feel tricked? Would you wish you could go back and pick differently?
Maybe not, if you had a calculator. But on a surface level, I think it would be easy to envy the friends that chose the million, and to be embarrassed (at least initially) for choosing the penny.
But then, by Day 21, you’d suddenly have $10,485.
And by Day 28, you’d have $1,342,177.
By the end of the 30 days, you’d be sitting on $5,368,709.
Almost five and a half times more than your friends started with.
And unlike your friends, it would have been given to you slowly, methodically, making it perhaps less tempting to spend all in one place, or to feel overwhelmed by its sudden existence in your life.
With patience, you could make the absolute most out of a *tiny* penny, something that today feels so insignificant—so much so that it’s in talks to be eliminated from production because it’s so expensive to make.
It is hard to choose the slow, methodical path. To invest in something that you believe can turn into something bigger. To turn a blind eye to the glitz and glamour of people living rich right now and trust that riches (perhaps figurative, perhaps literal) will find you in their own time.
I think to choose faith is to choose the penny.
It’s choosing the mustard seed1.
It’s choosing the unknown and the known at the same time.
It’s understanding that what we see (like the million dollars) is not always all there is.
Hebrews 11:1 says, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
And 2 Corinthians 5:7 says, “For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
I think the world is great at flashing lights in our faces, offering things on a platter, telling us THIS (and this and this and this) will solve all of our problems—this is what will fix everything RIGHT NOW. But they are shallow promises, crafted not only for quick fixes but quick bucks. They are often designed without our well-being in mind, let alone our deeper purpose.
To choose the million is to choose a fire that will burn out, a party that will end. But to choose the penny (to choose God) is to step firmly onto a path that leads to wonder, peace, joy—to a wealth unable to be defined by worldly standards.
To choose the penny is to choose to be grateful for even the smallest blessing, and believing it is part of something bigger; to invest in the work God is doing in your life, even if it doesn’t look quite as flashy as those around you.
Let us all find patience for the penny—you never know what God can do with it.
Matthew 13:31-32