Remember that story a couple of years ago about the young boy in rural MN who wandered away from home? They looked until darkness made them pause for the night. At sunrise the next morning, they resumed the search, but there was no sign of the boy. They felt as if he had just vanished. Then, one of the searchers said, “Let’s get together in one long line. We will join hands and sweep up and down the prairie until we find him.”
They formed a line a quarter of a mile long. On the third sweep, they found the boy lying in a small ditch behind some brush, near a culvert. He was dehydrated and disoriented, but he was alive. A reporter asked, “How did you find him?” And a searcher said, “Honestly, we never would have found him in time, if we hadn’t joined hands and walked together.”
What might that kind of love that leads to unity look like here in our community?
What could we do, hand in hand to make this neighborhood stronger? The past two years we have hosted Waking up white discussions, helping people meet our Muslim and immigrant and persons of color neighbors.
What have we been doing, hand in hand with the La Crescent community to strengthen the witness of faith? (Baccalaureate, local workcamp, chemo care kits, baby showers, clothes closets & food shelf).
How might we encourage eating together and the unity it fosters? (Drive through soups, Soups for groups? Lunches for bunches at clinics, schools and city halls, Pre-made meals for families with a newly baptized little one to have a leisurely meal time. Monthly summer picnics - all are gaining in popularity these days.