Harold Storelee, age eighty-eight, was cutting his grass one
morning last week when he fell. He was unable to get up.
Three boys walking by his home in Rochester, Washington,
heard his cries for help and flagged down a car to call 911.
An ambulance rushed to the scene and three emergency
responders took Storelee to a nearby hospital. He had broken a hip.
The three firefighter EMTs spent the rest of the day racing to car accidents and other calamities. At around 5 p.m., one of them asked his two co-workers if they would be up for going back to Storelee’s house to finish his lawn.
They agreed, so the trio went to the house, where they spent
an hour mowing, sweeping, and tidying up. “We knew he’d be down for a
while,” one of them said. “We figured the least we could do was go back
and help out.”
They didn’t do this for the acclaim. A neighbor saw them at work and took their picture. Storelee’s grandson posted the photo on Twitter with a statement explaining their service.
The joy of anonymous service
When we do more than we have to do without seeking credit
for our altruism, more people benefit than we might imagine.
There are the people whom we serve directly. There are the
people who inevitably find out about our service and emulate our actions and/or
our humility. For Christians, there is the eternal reward we receive for caring
for others in Jesus’ name (cf. Matthew 25:21). And there is the glory we bring
to God by emulating his Son’s servant heart (cf. Luke 19:10).
In a consumeristic culture that measures us by performance
and popularity, anonymous acts of service are not always recognized on earth,
but they are in heaven. In fact, Jesus promised that “your Father who sees
in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:4).
Such reward, however, is not the best motive for anonymous
service.
The better motive is transformational, not transactional. It
is serving others out of gratitude for all…
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