08/06/2026
One Thin Dime
A few Sundays ago it was my turn to serve as an usher at church. This is a volunteer service, but for me it’s more like being “volun-told”; I don’t remember raising my hand to say, “I’ll do it,” but I certainly won’t ever turn it down when I get the reminder email unless we’re going to be out of town that weekend. Anyway, as I stood at the altar that morning, looking down into the offering plate, I noticed something already in it – a dime. Just one dime. That’s all it took for me to imagine what kind of journey that dime took to get where it was.
I imagined that dime traveling in pockets, purses, car ashtrays, or cupholders to eventually wind up in our offering plate. Maybe somebody saw it on the sidewalk, bent down to claim it, and counted it as good luck. I’ve never put much stock into the whole “penny on its head is good luck, penny on its tail is bad luck” idea. Heck, finding money on any side is good luck in my book! Maybe that dime spent time in various cash register drawers, ending up as someone’s change at a grocery or convenience store. I didn’t examine that dime to see when it was minted, so I don’t know how long it has been traveling from place to place, pocket to pocket, until it wound up in our collection plate. I’ll bet it’s seen some stuff, though.
There was a time when dimes were pretty important pieces of currency. A dime is all it took to make a call from a pay phone back when I was young. I’ve stuck my finger in many a pay phone change slot to see if a dime had fallen and someone forgot to claim their change. A kid used to be pretty excited to find a dime under his or her pillow after the Tooth Fairy had paid a visit the night before. I’ll be honest; a dime won’t cover it now. I’ve got a few teeth that, at least according to my dental providers, are worth a couple of thousand dollars each! I sincerely hope they don’t fall out. I’d probably fight the Tooth Fairy for them!
I imagined one of our sweet church kids – James or Emmett, Declan or Turner, Ella Reid or Addalee – shyly dropping that dime in the offering plate as he or she passed by before church began that morning. I remember Mama, Daddy, or one of my grandparents giving me a dime to put in the Sunday School collection or the offering plate during church. I was told that morning to put it in my pocket and keep up with it until it was time to give it to God. Sometimes they’d give me a quarter to put in the plate, and once in a blue moon, it would be a whole dollar. Most of the time, though, it would be a dime, a thin coin that made me feel as though I were doing something important for Jesus when I gave it in church. I had no idea.
At that age, I’d never heard of the Widow’s Mite, a famous biblical story in the Gospels of Mark and Luke. It describes a poor widow who donated two small copper coins, known as lepta (the smallest, least valuable coins in Judea), to the Temple treasury. Jesus told his disciples her tiny offering was greater than all the others, as she gave "out of her poverty" and sacrificed everything she had to live on. Even if I had heard it, I most likely didn’t understand it. I only knew that dime wasn’t mine; it was God’s, and I needed to give it to Him.
Looking back, I don’t think Mama or Grandma was teaching me about giving all I had, but they were teaching me about giving, about tithing, and about generosity in hopes that one day the money I gave back to God wouldn’t come from their purse or pocket, but from my own. I imagine that’s the same lesson whatever child put that dime in the plate was learning from his or her Mama or Daddy, too.
Maybe an adult was walking past the altar, saw that dime on the floor, picked it up, and put it in the plate. It could have fallen out of someone’s pocket earlier that morning, and a passerby thought nothing of dropping it into the plate on the way to his or her pew. In the end, it doesn’t really matter how it got there or who put it there as long as it made it. Because who but God knows how important that dime is?
By itself, that dime may not seem as though it would make much of an impact, but in God’s hands, we know better. You remember what He did with two fish and five loaves, right? That dime might be the one that finishes the amount needed to dig a well in Africa. It could be the ten cents necessary for a needy child in our community to complete his or her back-to-school item list. It may help someone pay a medical bill or electricity bill. The possibilities are endless, as is God’s amazing grace.
After my usher partner and I finished taking up the offering, that dime was no longer alone in the collection plate. I knew it wouldn’t be; such is the generosity of my church family. Had it been, though, I know God would have made it enough because, well, He’s God, and that’s what He does. I still like to think a small, innocent hand dropped that dime into the plate, one young hand and one thin dime, both blessed by our Father to do His work in some way.
Selah and Amen.
Thank y’all! God bless ya! I love ya!
