A man with a nagging secret could keep it no longer. He confessed to his priest that for years he had been stealing building supplies from the lumberyard where he worked.
“What did you take?” his priest asked.
“Enough to build my own home and enough for my son’s house. And houses for our two daughters. And our cottage at the lake.”
“This is very serious,” the priest said. “I shall have to think of a far-reaching penance. Have you ever done a spiritual retreat?”
“No, father, I haven’t,” the man replied, “but if you can get the plans, I can get the lumber.”
That man didn’t get it, did he? Like a lot of folks these days, integrity is out the window.
Too many people are like the husband whose wife asked, “Why don’t you play golf with Ted anymore?”
The man replied, “Would you play golf with a man who moves the golf ball with his foot when you’re not watching?”
His wife replied, “Why, no, I wouldn’t.”
Her husband said, “Neither will Ted.”
Is anyone honest anymore? Ask Van Ha of Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. When she got home from her grocery shopping trip, Ha realized she was missing a critical possession: an envelope containing $12,000.
Panicking, she called her nephew, Truong Huynh, and both drove back to the store to retrace her steps. They checked at the customer service desk, but no one had turned in an envelope containing cash.
The store manager, Dan Desfosses, caught up with the two in the parking lot and offered to look through surveillance footage to see where she dropped the envelope. They found Ha getting out of her car earlier and entering the store but could not find her dropping the envelope.
Desfosses took their contact info and went back into the store. About that time, a regular customer named Skip stepped up to the counter and turned in the envelope. The two rushed to the parking lot and caught up with the distraught duo as they were leaving. Ha and Huynh were thrilled!
“It takes a special kind of person to do something so honest and selfless, and Skip, you are a true example of integrity,” Huynh wrote on social media.
Several years ago, two Valparaiso, Florida, 13-year-olds named Aaron Milligan and Josh Thedford ran over a really thick envelope with their lawn mower. What they found was an envelope full of money that stalled out their lawn mower. When they picked up the envelope, they eagerly thumbed through a dozen or so $20 bills, and then found the $100’s. Altogether, their discovery totaled $2,787.
“We were shocked,” Aaron said.
“We couldn’t even breathe,” Josh added.
The boys started a list: Jet Skis, Playstations, baseball equipment, a new lawn mower.
As their list grew longer, they began to have second thoughts. Someone lost that money, and they knew it would be wrong to keep it. It didn’t belong to them.
Josh’s mom drove them to city hall, and they handed the envelope over to stunned police officers. The cash had already been reported missing by its owner, a 36-year-old former sheriff’s deputy who was permanently disabled when injured on active military duty. He was on his way home from the bank with money he planned to use to make a purchase for his kids when he dropped the cash.
Three hours after reporting it missing, the police called to report the boy’s recovered envelope. He rushed to the police station and met Aaron and Josh, who knew they had made the right choice. The boys were rewarded $80 each, not quite enough for a Jet Ski, but, at the time, more than they’d make in a day of mowing lawns.
Sandwich shop owner Janet Kirkpatrick treated the boys to a free lunch and told them they were heroes.
“These are the sort of boys you want in your neighborhood,” she said. “A lot of people would have just taken the money and run, but these are good boys.”
Proverbs 10:9 reads, “Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out.”
Thankfully, there are still some honest people in this world who walk in integrity.
[David L. Chancey, the Writing Pastor, enjoys preaching, writing, and spending time with family. See more of his writings, including his books, at www.davidchancey.com. Contact him at [email protected].]
