A cold snap this morning, frost on the cars, and I remembered the merchant in Chicago who, when it got to be twenty degrees or so, would silently send a boy out with blankets for the guys huddled in the alleys for maybe a two-block radius. I saw this happen. What struck me powerfully was that the kid didn’t even ask. The boss just nodded and away he went, the kid with the blankets. The kid told me later he collected the blankets back when the temperature went back up over freezing. Once a year the dry-cleaner around the block washed the blankets for nothing. Things like this just seem to be everything. There’s a lot of stuff like this. There is more stuff like this than anyone could ever measure; maybe that Is another reason we need God, to keep track.

The words of Brian Doyle.