It was snowing when a man shuffled into the soup kitchen where I volunteer.

He was wrapped in a tattered blanket and limping badly.

He had big holes in his shoes patched with peeling duct tape.

He inquired if we had a pair of shoes.

“What size?” I asked.

I was taken aback when he said 11 1/2, the same size I wear.

Just the day before I had donated a pair of gently used size 11 1/2 sneakers I didn’t wear anymore. I put them in a donated clothing closet in the back room of the soup kitchen.

When I checked the closet the sneakers were still there.

I brought them to the man whose eyes lit up when he slipped his feet into the sneakers.

“They fit like a glove,” he said.

The man said he was feeling jittery because after finishing breakfast at the soup kitchen he was scheduled to begin a 12-day stint in a nearby alcohol addiction treatment program.

He chucked his old shoes in a trash bin and thanked me profusely for the sneakers.

“At least my feet won’t be killing me when I get to rehab,” he said.

At first I thought it was a coincidence the man and I shared the same shoe size.

But then  I realized it’s what grace looks like.