Sacrificing Mercy: After Dinner Conversation, #61

By Henry McFarland

Synopsis - A devote Christian refuses a heart transplant based on her religious convictions.

After Dinner Conversation is a growing series of short stories across genres to draw out deeper discussions with friends and family. Each story is an accessible example of an abstract ethical or philosophical idea and is accompanied by suggested discussion questions.

Podcast discussions of this short story, and others, is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, and Youtube.

• Language: English
• Publisher: After Dinner Conversation
• Release date: Aug 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9798201255558

Book preview

Sacrificing Mercy

After Dinner Conversation Series

INWARDLY I RAGED AGAINST Jenny’s religion, her God, and yes against her. She had a chance at life, at health, how could she refuse it? Damn the religion that told her to destroy our hope! But showing my rage would make it harder to persuade her. Besides, it was time to help her into bed. The doctor’s visit had exhausted Jenny, and she quickly dropped off to sleep. She looked as peaceful as a saint in a stained-glass window, and as fragile.

On a spring day ten years ago, a petite young woman with a pixie haircut pushed a shopping cart piled high with groceries across our college campus. Some cans fell from the top of the pile. I picked them up and offered to help push the cart. Jenny’s bright blue eyes widened in a smile that lit up the world.

Jenny led me to the food pantry at a local church, where an obese woman with a loud cough sat on the stoop and puffed on a cigarette.  Jenny sat next to the woman and said in a cheery voice, Good morning Mrs. Simpson, I hope you feel better. Come on inside, we’ve got tomato soup—your favorite.

Mrs. Simpson might have been better off if she used the money she spent on cigarettes to buy her own soup. Still something in Jenny’s kindness to her touched me. Because of that, and to spend time with Jenny, I began to help in the food pantry—just one day a week. Soon my life revolved around Jenny. We married the week after graduation and settled down for a blissful four years of health.

Then came four years of sickness. Cardiomyopathy attacked her heart and began a deterioration that doctors could slow but never stop. I did what