Community Looks Like...

Google defines the word community as “a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.” 

On television, community is often seen as a group of friends who can simple stroll through one another’s doors at just the right moment to provide comedic relief.

In Acts 2, community is described as being a group of people who “devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” 

At Moose River Outpost, community looks like throwing on life jackets and piling into a speed boat to watch the sunset. 

It looks like music blasting in the coffee shop while you run frantically around a ping pong table, enthusiastically attempting to win a game of Polish. 

Community looks like the small children who make birthday cards and baskets for those celebrating.

It looks like co-workers who support one another when people are sick and hurting, stepping up to fill in holes even when the tasks are way outside of their job description. 

Community looks like the quote book in the Pamola cabin: completely out of context, full of inside jokes, and hilariously beautiful all the same. 

It looks like singing at the top of your lungs while digging in a mud pit.

Community looks like a co-leader who can assuage your nerves and fears in one minute and have you laughing so hard that you cry the next. 

It looks like conversations on a deck, sweetened by sparkling water and the sounds of two-year-old babble.

Community looks like a kitchen staff that notices when you’re less enthusiastic than normal, and stops you to ask if you’re okay. 

It looks like a group of campers decked out in face paint and wearing all green, prepared to fight to the death in “Color Wars.” 

Community looks like laughter late at night over bowls of ice cream.

It looks like a chef who orders you plain Cheerios and Irish breakfast tea and makes your favorite calzones. 

Community looks like a boss who reads the shift schedule in a Scottish accent one morning, and then stops everyone dead in their tracks the next night to make sure they stare at the blood red moon.

It looks like people who will wrap their arms around you when you are feeling tired or scared or overwhelmed or sad, and who will sit and listen and pray for you.

Community looks like conversations about life that are punctuated by discussion of how God affects all the elements happening around us.

Community looks like love.

Community looks like Jesus.

I’m not the best at friendships. I’m not the best at building community. I wrestle constantly with feeling engaged one moment and incomprehensibly lonely the next. Relationships are hard. People are messy, and boy, can we hurt one another. Despite this, I’ve decided it’s a battle worth fighting, for those times when the light peaks through and the kingdom of heaven becomes tangible are oh so unbelievably valuable. I will fight for this. I will fight for moments like this one right now, this moment where I sit on the floor of the office listening to the sounds of coworkers typing and scrolling and remembering that even in the midst of silence, I am not alone. I will fight for that fellowship of believers, right here in this place and wherever God leads me in the future. I need it. I want it.

And it’s worth any struggle.