Over the years, friends have given me unique gifts from antiquity. The coin and the frame in which it is displayed sit atop a bookshelf in our living room. There have been times in the last 20 years when I stopped to look at the coin and wondered through whose hands the coin might have passed.

Just this morning, I stopped and wondered that same thing again. This time I heard the word “recirculation.” Just as a coin will recirculate over time to arrive in unexpected hands somewhere in the future, so it is with some experiences and relationships we will have in the course of our lives. When the Roman coin was first minted, the future in which it would travel could not have been imagined by a first-century Roman citizen. So it is with our relationships and life experiences. When these things were first encountered in our history they had a different meaning and context compared to how they will be perceived and interpreted in our future.

I am sensing God is about to recirculate things from our past and bring them into our present. There is a purpose in this recirculation. When encountered they will have a greater value today than when we first experienced them in our past. They will become cherished and displayed as something unique and valued. They will also affirm the goodness of God – the God who increases value in all things over time. Don’t be surprised when God has someone or something from your past return to your present to assume a place of value and honor. This is how God works. His timing creates new value in old things.

Today, I am having lunch with an old friend I haven’t seen in years. Like two old coins, it will be fun to hear where our lives have taken us over the years as God has circulated each of us through various assignments in His Kingdom.