The Penny
The Penny
In the 90s a woman prayed to God for a money. She had none. She couldn't feed her children. She couldn't pay for anything. In fact, she prayed just for a penny because a penny is better than nothing.After her prayer, she stood up in tears and walked out of her cold, crumbling house on a street in Tbilisi, Georgia.Then something incredible happened. As she opened the old heavy and rusting swing gate her eyes were drawn down to to pathway in front of her.On the pathway lay a single penny just like she had prayed for just minutes before. She froze in that moment because how could a prayer be answered so quickly? Eventually she leaned over, picked up the penny and then stood upright again.Holding the penny between her thumb and finger she looked at the penny in disbelief, then smiled and carried on her day with her faith in the power of the miraculous enforced. Later that day she told her daughter the same story but with a twist after she had given the appearance of the penny some thought. The twist was this.
If I can ask for a miracle of one penny and one penny appears I should have asked for more.
Interesting, right?When I was told this true story that took place during the fall communism in the 90s in The Republic of Georgia I left the conversation with this thought.Why do we place restrictions or limitations on things especially ourselves?I realised something whilst here in Georgia. I realised that I have also placed limits on my own life. Limits on things I don’t want to place limits on but limits all the same. Why do we do this?Business, life, relationships, wealth and more. All encased and surrounded by limitations.
Limitations are embedded through life experience.
Experience of life can make us tough, sore, resistant, resentful and even hateful. Yet they can leave is with limited thinking.The old woman above had her belief in God but had limited that belief to a little rather than a lot. It wasn't really that she wanted a penny but rather she was highlighting that she need to feed her children. She believed that her God could give her what she needed in a time of desperation and need. She asked for a penny and received a penny literally minutes later.That does raise the question, what if she had asked for 100 rather than 1 or even 1000 and more? Yet she didn’t because her limitations based in a life of lack and her experiences led her to believe that maybe even asking for a penny might be too much.Humble I know, I understand and I felt it when I heard the story.In a country ravaged by the communist ethos of no-rewarding for greatness and an all men are equal in all things had scarred her like it scarred all ravaged by the flawed ideal. Scars by their very nature are tougher, harder and generally feel nothing. She had been moulded by her life of experience.
This produced her limited view of what could be.
I do want to share with you that this woman is still alive today, thriving and lives a good, strong and completely different life to her old life.An incredible story all the same.My own limitations can fall in front of me at times when I don’t want limited. My question is why am I falling into a limited space?It’s important to take time for life. Life takes some working out. The bad can shape us yet the good can recover, hug us, love us, hold us and ignite us back to life.For example, a woman can pass through the incredible pain of birth yet seeing this child in her arms can make the pain of birth become just a passing moment that had to be passed through.Life is a gift to be embraced by every ounce of our conscious being yet it can be easy to be stopped at a point in life and held there until the end of life. The experience has placed us within a limited space that we cannot get out from.The woman at the start of this email went through the collapse of her country. Can you imagine overnight not even having a currency? Literally this little country had to reinvent and recover itself after the fall of the USSR and of course the illegal occupation of their country.Even worse her husband suddenly died in her arms. She was left with her children in a country that had not even bread on the shelf and unless you got smart survival would be more than tough.She was and had limited but she broke through her life experiences to create the magnificence of possibility from utter impossibility.She started at the point of nothing and today she has two cars, a few houses and over sees one of the biggest companies in Georgia and neighbouring countries.Things aren't everything and certainty don't guarantee happiness but all the same she arrived at today from nothing.I believed it all started with that penny.How about you?Alan Forrest Smith
