Bitcoin

Twelve years ago, in 2013, Apple released the iPhone 5S, the first with a fingerprint scanner. The Oxford Dictionary selected selfie as the word of the year since we couldn't stop taking pictures of ourselves, and Edward Snowden shocked the world with revelations of the U.S. government collecting data on its citizens—something we probably should have realized on our own. Big Brother is always watching. 2013 was also the year that James Howell's girlfriend decided to clean the house. She swept and cleaned out the fridge and picked the trash up off the coffee table. In her purge she mistakenly grabbed a hard drive containing Howell's bitcoin wallet. Bitcoin was still in its early stages in 2013, but it was gaining popularity. This unique asset is supposedly extremely secure. It requires a digital wallet which is the access key to the bitcoin. Only the purchaser has this wallet. No one else has it and no one else can get it, like the key to your house except no locksmith can make a new one and no one can kick down the door if you get locked out. The hard drive with this digital wallet went into the trash bag along with everything else, went out the door, and down the road, lost to the black hole that is the Newport City municipal waste collection agency.

Howell was an early adopter of bitcoin, and in 2013 it was only worth a few dollars per coin. The 8,000 bitcoins his now ex-girlfriend threw away is now worth nearly 1 billion dollars (please note the B). Sometimes it is hard to know what something is really worth when you are living in the moment with it. The most valuable things in life are like that, really. The giggles of small babies even when you are utterly exhausted. The seemingly mundane moments around the house with someone you love. The too late to be reasonable runs to Waffle House with friends in college. Sometimes we need to be reminded, just before the moment occurs, that this moment matters. It will be special. So here is your notice: Sunday morning, August 10, 2025, at 9:45 a.m. is the All Church Breakfast and you should be there.

Okay, I know, this moment will likely not rate in the top ten breakfast moments of your life (though it is a potluck so that burden is really on you), but it is these small moments of time together, of life together, that define our lives. In the quiet and sometimes raucous gatherings of our common community there is a treasure. Perhaps not at any individual gathering, but in their aggregate, season after season, looking back you'll remember the people around you and how you encountered God because of them.