There is a story Saul Bellow told about a Rabbi who lived in a small village in Russia.

Every Friday morning, the Rabbi disappeared for several hours. The people of his congregation had an explanation for this. They would tell anyone who asked that their Rabbi spent those hours going up to heaven to talk with God.

When a stranger moved into the village and heard this, he was skeptical. So one Friday morning, he hid near the Rabbi's house to see for himself.

He watched the Rabbi rise, say his prayers, and then — unlike any other morning — change into peasant clothes. He picked up an ax and walked into the woods. He cut firewood for several hours. Then he hauled the wood to a small shack on the outskirts of the village, where an elderly woman and her son lived. He left enough wood to last the week. And then he quietly walked home.

The stranger stayed. He joined the congregation. And from that day on, whenever he heard someone say, on Friday mornings our Rabbi ascends all the way to heaven — he would quietly add:

Yes. To heaven — if not higher.

Jesus said: Whatever you have done for the least of these… you have done it to me.

Jesus promises that his presence is bound up in the actual act of showing up for someone in need. In the wood hauled through the snow. In the meal left at the door. In the phone call made to the person nobody else is calling.

This week, I want to offer you an invitation. Do something generous for someone you know to be in need. And try — genuinely try — not to let them know it was you.

When you do, I trust you will find what the Rabbi found on those Friday mornings. Not just the satisfaction of a good deed. Something more. A presence. A joy that doesn't quite have an explanation.

A foretaste, maybe, of heaven. If not higher.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, come. Surround us with your peace. Lift from us whatever we are carrying today, and restore us to the joy of your salvation. And then send us out — to forgive as we have been forgiven, to love as we have been loved, to give as we have received. Amen.