Spend it Well

On stewardship, mortality, and the gift of another day

Like most people, I have an “everyday carry” — a small handful of objects that accompany me through the day. While most of the items are pretty standard (the wallet/keys/phone trifecta), I often carry something slightly unusual — a single penny.

A penny, in and of itself, is not an unusual object. They are extraordinarily common — occupying countless pockets across the country every day, as the least useful unit of change.

A lone penny, however, is not even very useful for change — nor is that the purpose for which I carry it.

I carry it as a reminder.

The average American male has a life expectancy of seventy-seven years — or, put another way — 28,105 days.

We can’t really wrap our minds around a number that large, so it’s not very useful to us. But what if we looked at it through another lens?

What if, for example, an average male were to spend one penny a day for each of his days on Earth? At the end of his life, then, he would have spent $281.05.

We can wrap our heads around $281.05. I’ve held as much money in my hand — once or twice. It wouldn’t look out of place on my utility bill. While it’s not a small amount of money, when you’re using it to measure your span of life, it feels alarmingly thin. To make matters worse, if I’ve spent a penny a day for every day I’ve lived so far, I’ve spent just over $100 of that sum already,¹ leaving me with just $181.05.

Time to panic yet?

For every day that passes, we are spending one cent of that precious allowance, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. About every three months, another dollar is gone. By the end of each year, we’ve spent $3.65.

But here’s the thing — we’re not promised another cent.

I may truly have $180 left in that piggy bank, but that’s no guarantee. Maybe I’ve only got $85, or $10, or a buck twenty-five.

That’s why I carry the penny.

This lone penny — this single day — is all that I’ve been promised, and it is a generous gift. Whether I truly have $180 left to spend or just $10, I need to spend each penny as though it were my last — because someday it will be.

How will I spend this penny? How will I spend this precious day that I have been gifted?

It is being spent whether I’m intentional with my day or not. Whether I use the day to plant a garden with my kids or scroll on my phone for hours, the penny is spent all the same — and it’s not coming back.

Our time — just like our money, our resources, our responsibilities — has been entrusted to us to steward well. But our time — unique amongst our other resources — is finite. Shouldn’t we be most intentional about how we steward our time?

I try to keep a journal, where, in it, I keep track of my days — where I can look back and see what it was that I “bought” with the penny of that day. Some days I am proud of — days of intense presence with my family, days of hard work done well, days of delight and joy and whimsy, days where I strove to give God the maximum ROI on the day that he entrusted me with.

On the other hand, there are plenty of days I’m not proud of. These, mostly, look like blank or near-empty pages in my journal. When I ask myself, “what good did I spend my day on?” I sometimes come up, I’m ashamed to say, empty-handed. Some days I just… lived. Survived. On these days, I stand before my God as a lazy — even evil — servant, who took the generous day he was gifted and buried it in the ground.²

I carry the penny because I need the reminder. How we spend our time is never neutral. Paul says as much:

“Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk — not as unwise people but as wise — making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”³

Translated here, “making the most of the time,” the phrase literally means, “to buy back the time.” ⁴

This is what God asks of us. He has blessed us with another day here on Earth — Let us purchase it from the powers of the world and claim it for the Lord. Let us steward well this gift we have been entrusted with, and see that it’s returned with interest.

Each morning, you hold a precious day in the palm of your hand.

How will you spend it?

1. If you can do math, now you can tell how old I am.

2. Matthew 25:14-30

3. Ephesians 5:15-16

4. Strong’s G1805 - exagorazō (ἐξαγοράζω)