Daily Meditation: October 6, 2020

by John and Mary Margaret Hevron on October 06, 2020

Grace is when God gives us good things that we don’t deserve. Mercy is when he spares us from bad things we deserve. Blessings are when he is generous with both. Truly we can never run out of reasons to thank him. God is good all of the time. 

- Anonymous


It was 25 years ago, but I remember it as if it occurred yesterday. We were on our third medical mission to Honduras. We were humbled by our success in providing medical care to the poorest of the poor. We sought to enhance our experience by sending a medical team to a village ten miles away. The name of the village, Concordia, brought visions of peace, harmony and brotherly love. What a misnomer! We were soon to learn that the place was populated by misfits, outlaws and inbreeds. There was a large family there afflicted by congenital glaucoma, giving the populace an unworldly appearance with their oversized eyes.

I had stayed behind to man the clinic in the village we called home. My routine was upended when an emissary burst into my office to report that chaos and near mutiny reigned in Concordia. I was told to “Get there immediately!” It seemed that the unruly Concordians had upended the basket containing tickets to the clinic and the tickets rained down on the mob like confetti. Our supply of t-shirts to distribute to the needy quickly disappeared when the mob rushed our makeshift pharmacy where they were stored. Many of our medications disappeared as well. No mission group had ever visited this town, and they simply didn’t know how to respond.

It was with fear and trepidation, that I boarded the truck to travel the seemingly endless ten miles to Concordia. I dwelled upon the anger I would be met with for sending my colleagues to such a dangerous place. When we finally arrived, some shred of order had been restored. There were no neat lines of patients waiting to be seen, but instead a chaotic mass of humanity milling about and vying for attention. The doctors, to my amazement, were beaming. One physician exclaimed: “This is just like Saturday night in the Charity Hospital Emergency Room.” The dentists worked outside, and the pharmacy limped along in a somewhat orderly fashion. We worked until twilight, when we felt it best to pack-up and “get out of town”. The dentists were extracting teeth by flashlight. A bucket of extracted teeth and discarded dental syringes was seized and hurtled into the air. A cascade of syringes and needles glinted in the gloaming as they descended to earth. The towns folk who hadn’t yet visited the doctors were increasingly unhappy and jostling to be seen. We loaded ourselves onto trucks with the remaining supplies and started our retreat. Hands groped into the truck beds, where we were huddled, to grab anything they could. The mob literally chased us out of town. My fellow doc in the back of the truck said “I bet it was like this when we left Vietnam.” Our surgeon, an Irishman, commented: “In my country they write odes about days such as this.” We returned home safely, and evening prayer was a joyous occasion. This experience served only to heighten our zeal for mission work.

Grace is when God gives us good things, we don’t deserve
In Concordia, God graced us with a vivid unforgettable opportunity to serve.
Mercy is when he spares us from bad things
He showered on us his Mercy, by protecting us in Concordia.
On That day we were truly blessed.

Musical Reflection Ferry Cross the Mersey- Gerry and the Pacemakers

Dear Lord, help us to remember to bless the merciful, for they deserve Mercy. Amen.