Community can be as simple as the gift of a lemon. I was a recent college graduate, serving as a volunteer in Honduras. My roommate (another recent college grad) and I both liked to cook, but one night she and I had run out of ideas of what to make. All the meal ideas we had involved ingredients we that were miles away in town.
Not knowing what to do, we decided to put off making dinner, and walked the hundred or so yards to the house of a fellow missionary. She welcomed us with glasses of ice-cold zuko (it's like Kool-aide), and we sat down to chat about how our weeks were going. Somewhere in conversation, she found out that were out of new recipe ideas. She asked a couple of questions about what we had on hand, got up, and handed us a recipe and a lemon (the only ingredient we lacked).
I experienced a lot of community that year, but the gift of the recipe and lemon was really symbolic to me. We could have found the recipe on the internet, and there was actually a lemon tree in our yard, but it was the friendship, not the lemon chicken that turned a discouraging evening around. A few days later we paid her back with an egg she needed to make cookies.
If I had to boil community down to one word it would be sharing. Sharing our time, talents, possessions. Sharing our lives, both the big events and the day to day joys and struggles. Sharing our thoughts, hopes, and what is on our hearts. Sharing our lemons.
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