At APU and the church as a whole, we spend an awful lot of time talking about "community". It's the word that gets a lot of grumbles from the annoyed, eye-rolls from the self-righteous, and rubs the wounds of the lonely or burned.
So what do the majority of Jesus groups do to solve this problem and create community?
We have another potato salad luncheon after church. The families fill up a table to themselves, the old widows sit in a circle just like they do on Monday mornings when they sew quilts, the single young adults gather back together as if they were still in high school.
Notice there isn't a whole lot of inter-mingling. There aren't many new relationships. We eat our cold baked beans with a plastic spork only to head home without any new numbers or names.
And we pass it off as "community".
It makes sense why the phrase has a bitter connotation.
But today I saw something beautiful.
A sweet friend of mine was outside earlier tonight helping me find a cat (don't ask - explaining this will require its own post). After about twenty minutes and without a furry friend, we headed back to our dorm. She started walking slowly. Her back began to lean over and she clutched her stomach, breathing deeply through her cringing mouth. Her face was red and splotchy, her body appeared to sway, her eyes glazed over. I held my hands out, anticipating catching either her fainting body or a nice stream of vomit. I was hoping neither would happen.
I got lucky - neither did. I helped her upstairs and brought her to her room. She thanked me and said she was fine, she just needed to lie down. I made sure she had water, told her to call if she needed anything, and let her be - I wouldn't want to be watched as I wretched my guts out, either.
A short while later I got a text requesting Saltine crackers and some Sprite. I looked through my food stash and offered her the animal crackers and Cheerios I had.
So this began my hunt.
You would think Saltines and ginger ale would be a staple. They are. In houses. Not in college dorms.
I sent out a mass text requesting the goods and got the same response from everyone - no, sorry. I called a great guy friend of mine and asked if he would escort me for a walk to the grocery store down the street. He said to meet him downstairs in ten.
That's community.
Then I realized it was past 11pm on a Saturday night. After a thorough Google search, I accepted that nothing was open.
He called me back a few minutes later. How is she? Have you taken her temperature? How serious is it? Can she hold down anything? Do we need to make another (yes, another) ER run? He had made some phone calls in search of the crackers and soda.
That's community.
I packed a goodie bag of animal crackers and cereal, poured some Sprite I had long forgotten about in one of my (many) canteens, grabbed my (rather large) box of medical goodness and knocked on her door.
I pulled out my stash of GI medicines , offering her an array of choices (you can never be too prepared in Mexico). I first offered her a couple of medicines that would help her nausea and knock her out at the same time. She declined and said she couldn't be in a deep sleep because she had to wake a friend every few hours. This friend made the first ER trip and hospital stay of the weekend after a skateboarding accident (sigh, boys) and had suffered a concussion. Did she want someone else to call him for her? No, no, she wanted to be there for him.
Although she was vomiting her brains out, she was still willing to make sure her friend was okay. Although she was in the hospital until the wee morning hours last night and was back again today as soon as visiting hours began, she was still willing to sacrifice her sleep.
That's community.
After drugging her up on my non-sedating medicines, I went back to my room to let her rest. A bit later I got a phone call from another sweet friend. "Are you with her? How is she? I'm downstairs, can you come let me in? I have some things for her."
I went down to the first floor, opened the door, and found four beautiful friends with ginger ale and stomach medicines in hand.
That's community.
We gathered around her bed, loved her, laid hands on her and prayed.
Then God smiled.
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