23rd June 2016. A date etched onto many a British mind as a day of unbelief and shock (at least what the BBC and Facebook showed me!) as Great Britain voted to leave the European Union. To us, that day will be remembered as the day we lost $18,000 towards the cost of our new building.

One minute the British pound was worth $1.47 and the next it had dropped down to $1.35. That isn’t much when you are just changing a few pounds, but when you are buying a building worth $160,000 it adds up quickly. $18,000 quick.

Our first thoughts were: Lord, why didn’t you open the doors to get the transfer sorted 24 hours earlier? That would have been easy for You! It wasn’t that we hadn’t been aware of the potential downfall on the exchange rate - we had been trying to get the transfer done before the Brexit vote, just in case. But the cash flow hadn’t happened in time.

$18,000! Lord, that is like a year’s salary to some! Here in Peru that is like 3 years salaries to some! This is big money, Lord. Why have you allowed this Lord?

This is what came to mind: ‘A year’s salary… wasted… that reminds me of a story in the Bible:

“Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?””

— John 12:3-5

Three hundred denarii was nearly a year’s wage and yet Jesus did not worry about the wasted cost, but instead recognized the infinitely more valuable act of Mary’s heart. The eternal value of her worship.

I began to understand. $18,000 is nothing to God. He can drop that into our bank account at any moment. He isn’t worried about the monetary value of something. His currency is worship!

The Holy Spirit began to challenge me: What if losing $18,000 meant many opportunities to bring glory to God and bring Him praise and fame when He solved the problem?! Wouldn’t that be infinitely eternally more valuable than $18,000?

My thoughts went from anxiety to excitement about what He was going to do!

Ok, God. If this means an opportunity to bring You fame, let’s do this. If this means an opportunity for You to get glory, then losing $18,000 over night is a great idea! (The kingdom of God is so paradoxically to earthly ideas!) If it is an opportunity for us to worship You - I’m on board! Let us lavish that $18,000 on You! I don’t know why or how but suddenly I was thanking God for giving us an opportunity to give Him the glory and share Him fame, and we didn’t have a clue how God was going to solve this problem and it was only by faith that we believed He would. His next instructions were not what we were used to either…

(Join me for part 2 next week!)

This month I am embracing the spiritual discipline of celebration. You can read the previous blogposts here. This month is part of a year embracing grace through different spiritual disciplines. Find out more here.