Nothing says I care like taking food over when someone’s sick or has passed away. The practical application of our love for others plays out in the casseroles and pies adorning folding tables in fellowship halls as we comfort those left behind, or the overstuffed refrigerators of mothers too sick to cook for their broods.
I imagine every culture has a similar practice, and I think that’s fitting. Whatever differences we have with one another in education, economics, religion, or even lifestyle, we can agree that caring for others in their time of need supersedes those differences.
Somehow daily life splits us into groups: management eats in a different break room from labor; upper middle class work out at different gyms from the Planet Fitness budgets. No wonder our children learn to create exclusive cliques and shun outsiders.
Loss is the great equalizer.
This week I’ll be fluffing up some cream cheese, Cool Whip, and JIF to help a family saying good-bye to a woman I’ve never met, but whom they loved dearly, and I hope every bite of that pie says, “I care.”
…and that’s the view from My Front Porch.