by Roxanne Smith
St. Luke has an exciting opportunity to reach out in love to healthcare workers during the pandemic. Our Care Ministry Team has partnered with Angel Food Catering to make plans to provide meals to the staff at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital and University of Michigan Hospital. Our health care heroes are serving selflessly in a dangerous time, but they also need to be served, thanked, and encouraged.
To that end, Angel Food will prepare and deliver hot meals which are individually packaged and sealed. The meals, which cost approximately $10 per person, will be pork-free to accommodate employees whose religious or dietary restrictions exclude pork, and include a vegetarian option. Each delivery will have a note of thanks and appreciation for the health care heroes—from their friends at St. Luke Lutheran Church. Administrators inside both hospitals will identify units or teams of employees who would most benefit from the appreciation and support of the community.
Our health care heroes are serving selflessly in a dangerous time, but they also need to be served, thanked, and encouraged.
This is where you can help.
Please consider making a special gift toward this effort, especially if you have not lost employment or not had reduced income during the pandemic. No amount is too small. There is a fund called “COVID-19 Frontline Workers” on the St. Luke website as well as on the St. Luke app under “Give”. Or feel free to mail a check to St. Luke. We will take care of the rest. (This campaign has closed. All links are no longer valid.)
If you have lost employment, have reduced income, or find giving financially a challenge, please know there are other ways you can encourage frontline workers. You can pray for them, that God would encourage them and keep them safe during a traumatic and frightening time. You can thank them if you see them. You can send an encouraging card, text, or Facebook message to them.
Some of you may prefer to respond more directly. Feel free to partner with your home group, friends from St. Luke, or people in your local community. You could buy individually wrapped, prepackaged snacks. You could write an encouraging note, or have your children color pictures, or create other expressions of thanks and support. Several St. Luke families have already done this. Be aware that if you want to drop anything at the hospitals, you must prearrange this with the hospital’s administrators. We’d love to assist you in connecting with them, so click here and let us know how we can help.
If you can sew, you may already be making masks or surgical caps for the frontline workers. Several individuals from St. Luke are already doing this. Look for a blog post next Friday which will give more information.
There are many ways we can respond; we all have different gifts and abilities. But by all means, let’s respond! Jesus calls us to love one another, and we want to be Jesus’ hands and feet during this pandemic.
