Leaving A Fingerprint Behind

A very practical rule of thumb that I have tried to live by over the years, is to always leave a place better than you found it. While substituting in our local school district's mail room yesterday, I noticed that there was no ice in an ice container that was in the icebox. Since I needed to go to the cafeteria to pick up a mid-morning snack, I took the ice container and asked the server to please fill it up with ice.

Not long after I arrived in the mail room with the ice, there were two ladies I know who came into the mail room, asking me if I had picked up some ice, because they knew my modus operandi from previous visits. I told them that I had indeed picked up some ice in the cafeteria, and they were welcome to use the ice. They were ecstatic because I had thought of their needs as I was considering my own (Philippians 2:2-4).

Then I observed that the mail room was short of mail bins to place mail in. On my last mail delivery of the day to the U.S. Post Office, I picked up some extra mail bins so that the mail room employees would not run out of mail bins during the rest of the week.

A little advice to young people reading this blog article: Whatever you do that takes just a little bit of extra effort (going that extra mile - Matthew 5:41), you leave a fingerprint behind. That fingerprint identifies you as an individual who leaves a place better than he found it. As a result, you'll not only always have a job to come to, but the people you work with, will know they can trust you to go far beyond what you are required to do, and they will love you for having that attitude of heart!

Beloved, developing trust in your daily interaction with people is very important, for it gives you the opportunity to tell others of what God has done for you (Ephesians 1:3).

—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets