It’s really cold in here, I said.

“They turned off the heat.”

Who?

“Gas company.”

Why?

“Why else? Didn’t pay the bill, I suppose.”

The humming noise was overwhelming. We were shouting just to be heard.

What is that? I asked.

“Blowers.”

He pointed to several machines that looked like yellow windsocks, pushing warmed air toward the homeless, who waited in line for chili and corn bread.

They really turned your heat off? I said.

“Ye-up.”

But winter’s coming.

“That’s true,” Cass said, looking down at the crowd. “Be a lot more people in here soon.”

Thirty minutes later, up in his office, Henry and I sat huddled by a space heater. Someone came in and offered us a paper plate with corn bread.

What happened? I asked.

Henry sighed. “Turns out we owe thirty-seven thousand dollars to the gas company.”

What?

“I knew we were running behind, but it was small amounts. We always managed to pay something. Then it got cold so quick this fall, and we started heating the sanctuary for services and Bible study. We didn’t realize that the hole in the roof-”

Was sucking the heat up?

“Up and out. We just kept heating it more-”

And it kept disappearing out the roof.

“Disappearing.” He nodded. “That’s the word.”

What do you do now?

“Well, we got blowers. At first, they shut off our electricity, too. But I called and begged them to leave us something.”

I couldn’t believe it. A church in the cold, in America, in the twenty-first century.

How do you explain that with your faith? I said.

“I ask Jesus that a lot,” Henry said. “I say, ‘Jesus, is there something going on with us?” Is it like the book of Deuteronomy, the twenty-eighth chapter, “You will be cursed in the city and cursed in the country’ for living in disobedience?”

And what does Jesus answer you?

“I’m still praying. I say, ‘God, we need to see you.’”

He sighed.

“That’s why that tarp you helped with was so important, Mitch. Our people needed a glimmer of hope. Last week it rained and water gushed in the sanctuary; this week it rained, and it didn’t. To them, that’s a sign.”

I squirmed. I didn’t want to be part of a sign. Not in a church. It was just a tarp. A sheet of blue plastic.

Can I ask you something? I said.

“Sure.”

When you were selling drugs, how much money did you have?

He rubbed a hand on the back of his neck. “Man. Do you know, in one stretch, over a year and a half, I brought in about a half a million dollars?”

And now your gas gets shut off?

“Yeah,” he said, softly. “Now the gas gets shut off.”

I didn’t ask if he missed those days. Looking back, it was cruel enough to have asked the first question.

Later, when the plates had been cleared and the tables folded, Cass called names off the clipboard-“ Everett!…DeMarcus!”-and one by one, the homeless men stepped up and took a thin vinyl mattress and a single wool blanket. Side by side, a few feet from one another, they set up for the night. Some carried plastic trash bags with their possessions; others had only the clothes they were wearing. It was bone-cold, and Cass’s voice echoed off the gym ceiling. The men were mostly silent, as if this were the moment when it really sank in: no home, no bed, no “good night” from a wife or a child. The blowers roared.

An hour later, Cass, his work finished, lifted himself on his crutches and hobbled to the vestibule. The lights in the gym were dimmed. The men were down for the night.

“Remember, next time, I tell you my story,” Cass said.

Okay, sure, Cass, I said. My hands were dug into my pockets, and my arms and torso were shivering. I couldn’t imagine how these men slept in this cold, except that the alternative was on a rooftop or in an abandoned car.

I was about to go when I realized I had left a notepad up in Henry’s office. I climbed the stairs, but the door was locked. I came back down.

On my way out, I took one last peek into the gym. I heard the steady hum of the blowers and saw the shadowy bumps under blankets, some lying still, some tossing slightly. It’s hard to express what hit me then, except the thought that every one of those bumps was a man, every man once a child, every child once held by his mother, and now this: a cold gym floor at the bottom of the world.

I wondered how-even if we had been disobedient-this wouldn’t break God’s heart.

My eye caught a flicker of movement across the way. A large, lonely figure sat in the darkness. Pastor Henry would remain there for several more hours, watching over the homeless like a sentinel, until the overnight guy arrived. Then he would bundle up, go out the side entrance, and walk home.

I had a sudden urge to get to my own warm bed. I pushed through the door and blinked, because it had started to snow.

“Something happened.”

It was the Reb’s daughter, Gilah, who had called me on my cell phone, something she was unlikely to do unless there was trouble. The Reb, she said, had suffered a setback, maybe a stroke, maybe a heart attack. His balance was off. He was falling to the right. He couldn’t remember names. His speech was confused.

He had gone to the hospital. He’d been there a few days. They were discussing “options.”

Is he going to be…? I asked.

“We just don’t know,” she said.

I hung up and called the airlines.

It was Sunday morning when I arrived at the house. Sarah greeted me. She pointed to the Reb, released from the hospital and now sitting in a recliner near the back of the den.

“All right, just so you know,” she said, her voice lowered, “he’s not so…”

I nodded.

“Al?” she announced. “You have a visitor.”

She said it loudly and slowly enough that I could tell things had changed. I approached the Reb, and he turned his head. He lifted his chin slightly, pushed up a small smile, and raised one hand, but barely above his chest.

“Ahh,” he expelled.

He was tucked under a blanket. He wore a flannel shirt. A whistle of some sort was around his neck.

I leaned over him. I brushed his cheek with mine.

“Ehh…mmm…Mitch,” he whispered.

How are you doing? It was a stupid question.

“It’s not…,” he began. Then he stopped.

It’s not…?

He grimaced.

It’s not the best day of your life? I said. A lame attempt at humor.

He tried to smile.

“No,” he said. “I mean to…this…”

This?

“Where…see…ah…”

I swallowed hard. I felt my eyes tearing up.

The Reb was sitting in the chair.

But the man I knew was gone.

What do you do when you lose a loved one too quickly? When you have no time to prepare before, suddenly, that soul is gone?

Ironically, the man who could best answer that was sitting in front of me.

Because the worst loss you can suffer had already happened to him.

It was 1953, just a few years into his job at the temple. He and Sarah had a growing family: their son, Shalom, who was now five, and their four-year-old twin girls, Orah and Rinah. The first name means light. The second means joy.

In a single night, joy was lost.

Little Rinah, a buoyant child with curly auburn hair, was having trouble breathing. Lying in her bed, she was gasping and wheezing. Sarah heard the noise from her bedroom, went to check, and came running back. “Al,” she said, hurriedly, “we have to take her to the hospital.”