The Coats She Left Behind

When Miss Rosa Lee Patterson died in 2019, the members of her small church in Albany, Georgia, expected a modest funeral. Rosa had never held a title or led a committee. She worked thirty-one years at a dry cleaner on Oglethorpe Boulevard, and what most people didn't know was that every winter she quietly took home coats that customers never picked up, mended them by hand at her kitchen table, and drove them to the women's shelter on Pine Avenue.

At her viewing, something unexpected happened. Women began arriving — dozens of them — many strangers to the congregation. They came carrying coats. One woman held a camel-hair jacket with Rosa's careful stitching along the hem. Another clutched a child's parka with a new zipper Rosa had sewn in. They stood in that sanctuary and wept, each one a living testimony to hands that had simply refused to stop giving.

The widows in Joppa did the same thing for Tabitha. When Peter arrived, they didn't recite theology. They held up tunics and garments — the physical proof of a woman's faithfulness. Tabitha's legacy wasn't measured in sermons preached or offices held. It was stitched into every seam.

God saw that work. He sent Peter, and He raised her up — because the Almighty honors what the world overlooks. The question is never whether your service is grand enough. The question is whether someone, somewhere, is warmer because of you.