Secretly Wealthy

About twenty years ago, a jan­i­tor that had worked at an Ivy League Uni­ver­sity passed away. He was a quiet man. He lived alone. When they dis­cov­ered his will, they also dis­cov­ered that he left a for­tune to the school. Even though he did not have a for­mal edu­ca­tion, he believed in what the school did for young peo­ple.
I won­der how the stu­dents treated him. Did they sneer at his appar­ent lack of suc­cess? Was he invis­i­ble to them? It was like he was work­ing on some grand under­cover project. He lived on lit­tle and invested the rest. In the end, it seemed that he was spir­i­tu­ally brighter than prob­a­bly all of the The­o­log­i­cal fac­ulty com­bined. He also knew more about actu­ally build­ing pri­vate wealth than the Busi­ness fac­ulty. The most amaz­ing thing was obvi­ously his humil­ity. No one ever knew that the quiet jan­i­tor was a self-made multi-millionaire.
Noth­ing in the news report said any­thing about his reli­gion. They were focused on the money. How­ever, his trea­sure in heaven must be even more immense than what he gave to the school. His life’s work is still work­ing here in the edu­ca­tional processes. The floors he cleaned are cleaned by some­one else. Stu­dents that ben­e­fit from his thrift are unaware of the source of part of their finan­cial back­ing. He is no longer there at his job, but he is still at work for as long as that insti­tu­tion exists.
I am con­vinced that God will never for­get a sin­gle dime of this man’s gift, or not remem­ber a sin­gle sac­ri­fi­cial moment of his life. His works fol­low him for­ever — as they do for all of us. I never met the man, and I do not remem­ber his name. How­ever, just hear­ing the story and reflect­ing on it occa­sion­ally, inspires me to this day. Small amounts of good even­tu­ally out­weigh and out­last the most hor­rific imme­di­ate evils. When I go about the mea­ger chores of my life, I have to remem­ber that. God’s pres­ence is in foot-washing ser­vice. This is how he changes the world. No fan­fare. No parade. No mon­u­ments. Just good actions.