So here I am, late on a bitter cold night in a church basement, which serves as one of my town’s local warming centers. 

My job at the moment is to give each guest a blanket before they enter the sleeping room and claim a mat for the night. 

The line of guests in the hallway, winding up the stairs and out into the parking lot, tells me that we will be at full capacity tonight—seventy guests.

I take my place at the table at the far end of the check-in station, near the entrance to the sleeping room, where a dozen or more big black trash bags full of clean blankets are always heaped.

Except, tonight I see only one big bag of blankets. That’s it.

I check with the shift lead. “Do we have more blankets in the truck? In the storage pod?” I ask, feeling a little panicked.

Nope. This is the sum total of what the prep team delivered. One bag of blankets.

So I heft the bag onto the table, grateful that I have at least these few. I pull out the stack, and begin to distribute blankets as guests shuffle toward the sleeping room. 

End of stack.

I cast a forlorn glance down to my right, where the mountain of bags would be. And I see … another bag!

So I heft it onto the table, remove the stack of blankets, and continue to distribute, one blanket per guest, until the blankets are gone.

I look down the hallway to the long line of guests still waiting to check in.

Now I look again, wistfully to my right. And again a black trash bag appears beside my table, filled with clean blankets.

That’s odd, I think. My back is against the wall, and the narrow hallway, crammed with check-in tables and guests, allows no room for anyone hefting bulky bags of blankets.

So I empty out this next bag, distribute blankets until they are gone. And when I look I notice that another bag simply … appears. At this point I feel free to just go with the flow.

When the last guest has finally been served, I turn to another worker and say, “Did you see that?”

“Yeah,” she says. “That happens here.”

“How much love do you have?” the Lord asks. “Go and see.”

I could say, “Not nearly enough.”

The multiplication formula is very specific, and not complex: Gather together what little you have, bless God, and do the next obvious thing. 

This is all Jesus asks!

This is not magic. It is the way it should be, the reign of God here and now. 

At the end of my shift, before dawn, I walk out into the cold night and head back home. 

And in the quiet dark of my apartment I get down on my knees. 

I become, in some small way, an answer to my prayer: Your! Kingdom! Come!