This morning I was thinking about mercy meals. For those of you unfamiliar with that terminology, it just means meals provided by someone else while you’re mourning or ill or recovering from having a baby. It’s merciful to give them and a mercy to receive them when you’ve got a lot going on—and our church tradition is pretty consistently wonderful at caring for one another with mercy meals.

After life changed some eleven months ago due to Covid 19 showing up in the United States, I couldn’t see how mercy meals would continue. And that was hard as we had loved ones in our church body welcoming new babies, mourning deaths, and dealing with cancer. They needed to be fed, but we were in a position of not knowing how this coronavirus was being transmitted. I think about the several emails I shot off to a doctor friend (and fellow church member) in order to establish good mercy ministry policies in this new era. 

It wasn’t just the church struggling to figure things out. Schools closed completely. Our public library shut their doors and allowed patrons to hang onto their checked out books for months. Videos came out about how to wipe down your groceries. We were leaving packages untouched for three days to let the viral load lessen in case it was on the cardboard boxes. I wasn’t comfortable with dropping off a mercy meal with a side of coronavirus. I remember asking for church members to donate money for a grocery gift card thereby skipping the exchange of viruses along with lasagnas and burritos. But even then it was a poor substitute for showing up at a church member’s door and handing over a 9×13 pan that spoke of love and concern, that spoke of mercy.

It was a really weird, harrowing, uncertain time. 

We all adjusted when we learned that we could exchange items without great fear of virus transfer.

We quit wiping down groceries (thank goodness because that was an extensive process). The library opened up—though they still quarantine books for three days—and yesterday I learned I could stay in the library for up to two hours. We now take our delivered boxes into the house immediately, though I am mindful to wash my hands after handling mail. And we deliver mercy meals to church members’ houses again.

The act of feeding someone is the most basic and helpful act of all, I believe, as everyone needs to eat. When we’ve been through a rough time, delegating the task of finding food to a friend or family member has kept us afloat. I’m so so glad that, in this still very strange time, we can now walk up to someone’s door and hand over a bunch of hamburgers or a rotisserie chicken to keep them going for another day. A face is a wonderful thing to see, however briefly, when you’re going through a hardship. Being loved, knowing others are willing to sustain your family, is priceless.

I’d say that Covid has robbed many of us of many things. But one thing the darkness brings with it? The contrasting gorgeousness of light. Even a teeny tiny bit of goodness shines in the darkest of days. For that I am grateful.