When You’re Weary and Meet a Stranger with 11 Cents.

It was only eleven cents. Why did I wrestle? “Don’t you have eleven cents?” She questioned. 

And of course, I was quick to answer. 

I always have change, so much change it weighs my hand-sized purse in the same way the coins of others toil pull us southward.

I hold out a handful of change to the sharp-nosed, small, Latin-looking lady behind me.  “See.  I am fine. Good. Prepared.  Self-sufficient”, my hand full of jumbled money almost shouts out to her behind me.

But then she insists, “No, let me get it.” She hands the Starbucks barista at the counter her eleven cents.  I pass over a ten.

And something didn’t seem right.

“Thank you” my breath said, while my mind felt frustrated because let’s face it…whats eleven cents in a world full of debt?

But then, her piercing eyes look deep within, somewhere very few know, that place where even I very rarely examine.  “I want to give you these eleven cents, because it is very difficult times we live in, and because I have committed to do one good dead a day, in hopes to make this dark world a little brighter.”

And then, well, I am not sure what happened next.  It’s as if these past hard months I have swallowed came out from the bottom of a pit I never knew existed; leaking right out my eyes, right there standing in the coffee line.  There with the short Latin stranger staring, behind me.

“Oh, that makes you cry?” she calls out, me whipping my eyes.  No tip toeing around my sudden burst of something, drawn from somewhere, here, now, unexpected.

“Ya, I am sorry.  Thank you.  That means a lot.  I know it’s just eleven cents….but it means so much.”

And I wasn’t sure if her handing me a gift I didn’t earn is what started the flooding, or the fact that a stranger “got it”, knew, took off the mask and was fearlessly willing to admit….this dark world is not so easy to live in, sometimes.

“I am a believer.”  She continued. Beaming now, ear to ear.

“Me too.” My countenance shifts from this full understanding. 

Both our eyes brighten, and the fears of one moment disintegrate in light of this God-connection….nothing short of divine. 

It’s like the elderly lady my husband and I met at Disneyland many years ago.  Out of thousands of people, there she was.  Our hearts touching, our lives intersecting….

It was like meeting a Grandma, or old friend, or an Aunt that you just knew you would get to spend eternity with.

Old relatives meeting…yes, that was what it was like that day in Starbucks.

She kept on sharing.  How she just “happened” to stop through on her way to the airport.  “What? We are headed to the airport tonight too,” I told her.

That same night, same place, same chance meeting.  How utterly and completely strange.

Then, she went on to share about how her daughter was educated and yes, you’ll never believe it…but when I asked her age…her daughter was exactly the same age as me.  Nearly a doctor, my new friend told me about how her child was educated, but yet how sometimes the more education we get, the more of God we can shut out.

“I get you”….Headed to the airport to get my husband’s family member, also Latino.  Oh how I have cried out to God to draw this family I love, ever closer to Him.  All so smart.  All so educated.

But, she didn’t stop there.  When eleven cents is enough to make you cry, when kind words, a pat on the arm and goodbye would have sufficed….

She shared more.  Went deeper.  Sharing her story….so our stories could intersect and Jesus could be seen clearly between us two strangers who had never seen each other before now.

And I still can’t get how she could have seen my weary heart.  How she could have known that for twenty-two years my husband has been the only confessing Christian….And how sometimes, yes, the world can seem very hard.

And how often, not stopping at handouts, not settling for patted words, or ingenuine answers, can un-dig a life-time of struggling to “keep the faith” in a world that like she shared….isn’t going to get easier.

“Just keep shining little glimmers of light to others.”  She finally instructs me.  “Because one day, you never know, even after years and years and years of being a Christian….God can change things in an instant.  He can turn things around and open the floodgates…and everything in your life will change.”

“I have lived a long time.  And I have seen it happen.” She shares with an authority that I knew I shouldn’t challenge.

And don’t we all long for that friends?  Instant change? 

Don’t we hope for and pray, and wait for the speck of our small lives to radiate across the darkest skies on the most dreariest of days?  Don’t we covet those times faith rises from strangers in stores, or from a hope that you have known laying dormant somewhere inside you?

The lady behind us rolls her eyes at our conversation. My small Latin friend yet to order because she’s ministering as well as any traveling evangelical preacher. 

And yes, coffee probably held higher president in the eyes of the lady behind us, than Jesus.

Still, oh how I wanted to lasso her into our conversation, tell her of what a miracle our little “encounter” was.  Fill her in about how random meetings like this so very rarely exist in this day where our lamps must have a double supply of oil. 

But, I am not the pruner, or the gardener.  I am nothing but a servant.  And it must be Jesus timing, His prompting,  His Spirit that guides us or we’ll turn people away from Jesus….instead of to Him.

And maybe she too was meant to listen.  Meant to hope.  Meant to see how God could take perfect strangers and watch them love like family…

Cause nothing is happenstance.  There are no coincidences.  Yes, I must trust that God uses everything for his glory….Latin angels giving pennies, and scowling ladies standing there listening. 

For lady’s ministering through eleven pennies doesn’t happen everyday.

I squeeze her arm, stare her deep in her eyes the way she had greeted me.  Then say, “Thank you”.  Thank you not just for your pennies, but for your love, your wisdom, your ability to let God use you to see deep in me….where insecurities live and no one sees, but God.

And although our meeting wasn’t long, I know, I just know those eleven pennies were so much more than a good deed.  They were the beginning stream to a drought of hoarded water.  They are the heart of God bleeding, and reaching, and telling me, “I see you.  I know your needs.  I will fill your weariness, daughter…

For if I can bring a strange Latin lady randomly in the line right behind you to bless you and bring the light back to your soul….I can do anything.  And I mean anything my child.”

So friends, now I want to ask you today, who have you encountered lately that has greatly impacted your life?  What conversations have you had that bring light to this dark world? How could each of us intentionally give hope in practical ways to those around us? 

I pray today that whatever your situation, God finds you.  Yes YOU, right where you are, looking at that screen, aching, waiting, needing a touch from Jesus.

Because He sees you.  He loves you.  He is just waiting to show you…just how treasured you are.