at least that’s what my sister tells me – and she should know – she recently had an encounter with one!  I recently wrote a post about this very thing, this very phenomenon, entitled “Secret Santa – secret service” but it was only a dream that perhaps such persons still existed.  Now I know that they are alive and well and on the move among us, all because of what happened to my sister.

She had taken her class and another class of special needs children to the mall to see Santa, have their pictures taken with him and eat lunch.  It was a school field trip for students who don’t usually get to take many field trips.  They were eating lunch in the food court of a busy mall, no small undertaking considering the differing ability levels of each child, necessitating lots of support and assistance from the teachers and the aides who were with them.

As my sister was watching her coworkers interacting with the students, she was thinking how patient, caring, and attentive she saw them being to the students in their care.  Suddenly a man came up behind her and asked if he could give Starbucks gift cards to her and to each of her coworkers.  He said he had been watching and admiring how they treated each of the students in their care with such dignity and compassion.

My sister accepted his kind gesture, but when she turned around to thank him again, he had vanished!  She wondered if he was real, but the gift cards were very real.  Not only that, but later when she and the others opened their gift cards there was also a twenty dollar bill in each one!

Dear readers, this was such a fun and inspiring story, I just had to share it with you!  This is truly right hand – left hand giving at its best, truly undercover without blowing your cover stuff, truly top secret, secret service, a mission accomplished maneuver.

He got in, he assessed the situation, fulfilled the objective, and made a clean getaway. No one knows his name, he didn’t leave a business card or anything to link him to the scene of the good deed, he won’t be able to deduct his generous gifts on his income taxes, he won’t be recognized in a newsletter or at an awards banquet – he is truly a secret servant – his anonymity the measure of his success.

This secret servant brightened the day of my sister and her coworkers, blessing them with something unexpected, the monetary gift, yes, but more than that an acknowledgement that someone saw, recognized and appreciated the very special work they do each and everyday with the very special students they are privileged to teach.  That day in the mall, my sister and the other teachers were not invisible!

“Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Gather in heaven.  So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men.  I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full.  But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret.  Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”    (Matthew 6:1-4)

long live Secret Santas, secret servants, secret agents of good in this world!

sincerely,      Grace Day