Presidents’ Day
It’s Presidents’ Day.
If I’m being honest, this doesn’t normally mean anything to me except we’ve recently acquired various coins from years of one collector with various presidents on many of them.
Most of their portraits are as tarnished as the Union Pacific RR container they’re in. There’s also a mason jar of pennies with Abraham Lincoln’s silhouette and dimes with Franklin Roosevelt dated across the ages.
That’s not all.
There’s a Maxwell House Original Roast coffee tin collecting Kennedy half-dollars and an amber plastic vile with no child-resistant option or refills remaining that are full of quarters with George Washington’s profile. More coins are in a metal-hinged watch case with a solitary $2 bill with the face of Thomas Jefferson on the front.
There had to have been much patience in the collection of these coins over the years. Save times when the collector dipped into the tarnished vessel for perhaps a phone booth or a known vending machine to be passed. Maybe a parking meter on any given day. If that was true, and I’m sure it was, it seems to me the collector just added back to it with what I imagine to be all the end of the day valuables from the pants of this one man’s pockets.
So, here’s one old container after another old container with one old president after another old president with their face in the collection of dated years of coins. Yet, what remains the same in each container is one inscription on each coin.
“In God We Trust.”
Our first president, whose face is on the quarter said, “It is impossible to govern the world without God. It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor.”
Today we are a nation governed under President 47. But, we are not to put our trust in President 47 or 46 or 45 or 44. These often end up in portraits and silhouettes in a tarnished vessel. Our trust was never meant to be in these men. Our trust isn’t meant to be placed with any mere human who relies on human strength. We put our trust in the Lord.
“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence.”
It is in God we are to trust.
At the end of the day, there’s nothing more valuable.
Jeremiah 17:5-7