Recently, during the Thanksgiving holiday I was sent by my wife to the store to purchase some things for two of my daughters’ birthdays. As usual I was rushing from place to place doing errands and finishing last minute tasks. I wasn’t being very thankful during this time of thankfulness and was a bit put off by all of the Christmas rush. I live in Mansfield and was shopping at the Target and Staples stores.

 

The parking lot was full and I rushed in hoping to be there only a few minutes. In my rush to complete my tasks I dropped my billfold in the parking lot which contained the following: cash; a blank check; all of my credit cards; and driver’s license. I had left the parking lot at about 4 pm which left approximately a couple of hours of light to discover my billfold. I did not discover my loss until about 8:30 pm. I said a short prayer which wasn’t as full of faith as it should have been. I then started to find the information to be able to call my credit card companies to cut off the damage that would occur to my credit. In the process I happened to look at my phone to check my calls and saw a number that I did not recognize.

 

I called the message on my phone to see who it might be. I discovered it was the manager at Staples and she said that my billfold had been found in the parking lot by one of their workers on their lunch break. She indicated the store had closed at 6 pm and that they had placed it in the safe until I could get there the next day. It is interesting that my next thought wasn’t an attitude of thankfulness, but one of questioning what would be left in the billfold once it was found.

 

The next day early my wife retrieved my billfold and she called me quite excited. She told me that everything that had been in my billfold had been found and that I had not experienced any loss. It was only at this time that I began to celebrate and be thankful for the true miracle that had just occurred. I asked who had found the billfold and determined it was a young clerk probably making a minimum wage. I was so thankful for a person with integrity that did not have a price tag attached to doing the right thing.

 

Recently, I taught an ethics class and had surprisingly spoke of a scenario much like I just described I asked one of my students what they would do in the case of finding a billfold in a parking lot. The student said very quickly it would depend on how much money was in the billfold. I made the comment that I hoped that if I ever lost my billfold that it would not be him who would find it. Everyone laughed and went on about the class, but it struck me then and it strikes me now that character is not about what we say we would do, but in fact it is what we do when no one is looking and that we try to do the right thing. The wrong thing to do will never be the right thing to do and the right thing to do will always be the right thing to do.

 

I am sorry that I did not have enough faith in human kind to believe in such a miracle at the time, but this young man has restored some of my faith in mankind during this time for thankfulness and giving. I hope you get to experience some of the joy I just received from my Holiday miracle. Take time to enjoy the holiday season. 12/12/16