The Coat on the Hook

Margaret Chen had been praying for her neighbor Dorothy all winter. Every Sunday she'd bow her head at First Baptist on Elm Street and whisper, "Lord, watch over Dorothy. Keep her warm. Keep her safe." She meant every word. Her faith was sincere, her concern genuine.

But Dorothy's furnace had broken in November. By January, the seventy-eight-year-old woman was sleeping in her coat, boiling water on the stove just to put some warmth into the kitchen air. Margaret noticed Dorothy's lights flickering at odd hours. She noticed the old woman wearing gloves indoors when she waved from the window. She prayed harder.

It was Tom Whitfield, the agnostic mechanic two doors down, who finally knocked on Dorothy's door. He didn't pray about it. He just showed up with a space heater under one arm and his toolbox under the other. He spent that Saturday on his back in Dorothy's crawl space, replacing the igniter and bleeding the fuel line. By evening, heat poured through the vents for the first time in three months.

Margaret brought a casserole the next day and felt something twist in her chest when she saw Dorothy's home already warm.

James cuts straight to the bone with this truth: faith without deeds is dead. Not weak. Not incomplete. Dead. Like a coat hanging on a hook while someone shivers next door. The Almighty does not ask us to choose between believing and doing — He asks why we ever imagined those were separate things.