Cross and Dimes

NCF Office – April 29, 2025 11 Comments

This week’s blog is brought to us by Judson Chubbuck entitled: The 10% God-part and the Cross and the Dimes in the Dryer. A personal story towards practicing forgiveness and positive recollection. Enjoy!-Melissa Logsdon, NCF Associate Pastor

Twenty-five years ago, I was completing my Masters Degree in pastoral counseling. One last class on family systems had me reviewing my close family relationships and evaluating any unhelpful/dysfunctional/toxic behaviors, feelings, and emotions I might have picked up from my own family system. In the process of my review, I became aware of a close extended family member, an aunt, whose behaviors and manner of communication had hurt me (and others) as a child and young adolescent. 

This family member was a strong person in many good ways, but that strength also had some not-so-good effects. Our interactions frequently provoked exaggerated feelings of guilt and fear of punishment in us. Because this person was very religious in the image of a frowning God, she evoked a sense that God was angry at us most of the time too! We were sensitive kids who needed a richer balance of nurture to negativity in relationships to be healthy. 

That’s the background to how I found myself one morning, years later, lamenting to God about why couldn’t I have had a more nurturing childhood experience and how wrong it was for her to treat us this way.

As I went on lamenting with the Lord, I heard an inner voice begin to counter my complaints with the phrase, “That wasn’t the God part of her! That wasn’t the God part!” And my memory was opened to an almost weekly childhood scene of two older adults seated in a crowded local café with three small children sharing a communion of ten cent coffee, cokes, and ice cream bars. Despite a few “you kids be quieter” or “don’t spill anything”, we avoided criticism and sat together in a joyful peace. For a dime a drink, it was a delightful day being together and it was part of the God part of my aunt that I needed to remember. 

I had a sudden sense of the Lord with me and told the Lord that every time I saw a dime I would try to reflect on how powerful a small investment of love and forgiveness can become with opponents and enemies…like, I can afford that. The picture of the dime and the words “God part,” melded together in my mind to the “ten percent God-part,” which I could use in difficult relationships to look for small and large vestiges of goodness that my own defensiveness might blind me to. 

And I also told the Lord that whenever I saw a cross, I would try to reflect on how much the Lord gave to forgive his opponents and enemies, including me, that I might have a generous outlook to forgiving others too.

Closing my prayer time, I went on with my day. Little did I expect it, but the Lord had one last gift for me. It was Friday, my day off. I had a job of disassembling our clothes dryer and replacing the drive belt. As I cut the old belt and lifted out the dryer drum (what you see when you open the dryer door), I saw money lining the bottom of the machine! 5 Nickles, 7 pennies, and over 20 dimes had tumbled their way out of the drum. I thought the dimes were just an interesting coincidence to my prayer time until I began cleaning the drive pully for the belt. There I found the most delicate small gold cross and chain wrapped on the pully, just hanging there where it should have been destroyed. I took it as a personal gift of grace and a sign from the God of large and small things to pay attention to and not doubt what I had learned that morning. 

So the title to this offering: “The 10% God-part and the dimes and the cross in the dryer.” I reflect on this lesson most days of my life and Sharon likes it too!  -Judson Chubbuck