Wayne Roberts forwarded an article to me about a bizarre incident that recently occurred in Fort Collins, Colorado.  Colorado State University student Ted Nischan, who has a lead foot and limited income, went to the Fort Collins municipal court to pay a speeding ticket.  What makes that newsworthy is that his form of payment was not cash, check, or credit.  It was coins!  $160 worth of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters.  The court workers apparently does not accept that much money in that form of payment.  His personal bank would not convert the money without charging him, a fee that would leave him short of what he owes the government.  Court supervisor Fran Seaworth says that it would be a colossal waste of taxpayer money for a clerk to count out that much change.  It is a refreshing, if unusual, example of prudence in a world of red-tape-filled bureaucracy (Article Here).

In many areas of life, we risk bogging down in the minutia and majoring in the minor.  Men’s business meetings or even elders’ meetings which regularly, predominantly deal with finance and material matters to the neglect of what our main mission is risks doing the equivalent of counting a bucket full of change (cf. Acts 6:3-4; 20:28).  In our own personal, spiritual lives, when we are consumed with the here and now with little regard to eternal matters, are we frittering away time counting our bucket of change?  That’s what the rich farmer did (Lk. 12:15-21).  How easily we can lose sight of the important which poring over the ultimately inconsequential!

–Neal Pollard