What’s the best thing you’ve ever found randomly on the street?
For me, it is love—the kind that is patient, kind, keeps no record of wrongs, and does not delight in evil (1 Corinthians 13:4–6). But how often does one truly encounter love on the street?
Perhaps it is easier to stumble upon money, gold ornaments, or a discarded masterpiece—treasures many would call “the best.” Or perhaps the best find is a blameless conscience, one that urges the finder to return lost property to its rightful owner.
Conscience is the seed of love and the compass of right and wrong. It reminds us that what is best for one may be worst for another. To selfishly keep a street-found treasure is to steal another’s happiness.
A coin has two faces: dropping a hundred-dollar note into a beggar’s bowl is an act of love; dropping the same note on the street—and pocketing it—unveils greed.
Street scenes are humanity’s mirror. Queue-jumping for a bus seat, snatching a taxi from the first in line, or turning a blind eye to a frail, hungry beggar shivering on a cold pavement—these are sorrowful sights in modern cities.
In my city, people are generally sceptical of street beggars, many of whom are travellers or professional panhandlers. Just last week, I passed a woman with polio, performing a cappella, a collection bag at her feet. I walked up and placed a hundred-dollar note inside. At the same moment, a man did the same, muttering a few words to her. To onlookers, they might have seemed accomplices.
But to me, a beggar’s identity—real or fake—is irrelevant. What matters is that my small kindness, joined with many others, helps make our city known as a place of love and care—one that receives strangers with goodness, forgives wrongs with kindness, and judges no one by lowly status.
Truly, the best thing found on the street is neither money nor treasure, but the greater love—the willingness to show kindness to strangers without expectation of reward.
Yet good conquering evil is easier said than done. Who gives us the power to overcome?
The poem below is grounded in fact and reflective of that very truth.
—✨
“Treasure Found on the Ground”
A ten-dollar bill lies face-up on the street,
Footsteps pass—no one stoops to greet.
Why does no hand reach down to claim?
Too small a sum for any name?
Or fear of taint, of unseen stain—
Not greed or guilt, but sheer refrain.
What matters most is how we act—
Three laps I walk, and it’s gone, in fact.
Good conquers evil—hard the fight,
The end unknown till final light.
—✨
en yan hua fang 