A $10.00 Lesson On Faith

It’s been a while since I’ve shared faith-related subjects. Today, I want to tell you a true story on the lesson of faith.

I was leaving work on Thursday evening with one of my co-workers who happens to be one of our company’s senior vice presidents. We were chatting and having a light-hearted conversations as we were walking to the parking garage.

The line for the elevators were so long that we were standing on the sidewalk waiting to get inside.. A homeless man walked up to my coworker and said, “Sir, you’re the last person I’ll be asking for today. Do you have any money or spare change? I would like to get a soda.” My coworker, mind you, is dressed in a suit so I wasn’t surprised he was approached.

In the back of my mind, I wanted to give him a dollar. I had money folded in three separate piles in my wallet. One pile had three crisp one dollar bills, the other had about $6.00 (a five and one one) and I had a ten dollar bill folded with a dollar if memory serves me right. I had every intention to give him a dollar. Truthfully, I didn’t want to try and separate my crisp dollar bills in front of him only to give him one of the three bills I had.

When I handed him the money, I thought I had given him an old, beat up dollar.

It turns out that I gave him a ten dollar bill. I didn’t realize it until I looked down to see ten dollars in my hands in between the three of us. A part of me was floored, thinking, “What just happened?!” while the other part of me thought, “What are you doing?!”

Once my coworker saw what I had done, he said, “Wow, you’re so kind, Huong.” To which I responded, “How I see it is, I’m blessed so I want to bless others. I’ll get it back ten-fold.” He responded with, “Oh, no doubt you will get it back ten-fold. A dollar would’ve been enough, but ten?” I was thinking, “Yeah, that was my thought too, buddy!”

However, I responded with, “I just have to have faith that he’ll do the right thing with it.” My coworker and I then talked about how hard it is to trust that homeless people will do what’s right with what they’ve been given. We also talked about how we gauge people when giving away our hard-earned money.

During our conversation, I was a bit panicked. The cash I had was intended to be used as my lunch money for the week. However, I felt God telling me to just trust.

Faith was all I felt.

Actually, truth be told, I felt so weird about it afterwards. However, I just prayed and told God to help that man use it however he needed it.

I’ll never know what that man used the money for, but what I learned was that God uses His children to do great things for His kingdom. Even though we don’t see it right away, we just have to have faith that He will provide.

I may not know what that money was used for, but part of me thinks it was timely considering it is the holiday season. Part of me also thinks that it was a moment my co-worker will never forget. Maybe it’ll prompt him to change his perspective, give more in his life or just “trust the process,” you know?

What lessons on faith have you learned this year?

I was going to tell this story on Friday, but God pressed it upon my heart to post this week. I’m pretty sure it’s because everyone doesn’t have Friday on the brain and can pay better attention, ha!