The River Church Community

Gardens require watering.  This is fun when you first start but over time it can become a burden.  Since I just planted my summer garden, I was quite happy to go to the community garden to water.  It was a Saturday afternoon.  When I arrived, another family was there.  And it was a family that I had not met.  I knew a family worked the plot but I had never actually seen them—only the fruit of their labor.  For months this went on.  Until this last Saturday.  Her name is Loupe.  She was there with her daughter harvesting the beets they planted months before.  They had tons!  They had so many beets that her daughter sat separating the bulb from the greens while Loupe pulled them out of the ground.  As I watered, we talked.  We connected.  The garden was both our place of connection and the source of our conversation.  It gave us something to talk about.  I spoke about my winter crop and they talked about what they hoped to plant this summer.  And before I left, she gave me a bag of beets.  

I left grateful and hopeful.  Only a few months ago, we started the community garden to bless families in the Washington Neighborhood.  And now the harvest is here and I am being blessed by them.  Now, out of their abundance they are serving me.  Not only have I begun to meet many families because of the garden, but the people that I meet are giving me stuff now!  It seems to me that this should be the result of mission.  The giver becomes recipient and recipient becomes giver.  This is the Kingdom of God.  Upside down.  The only way it should be.

Tony Traback, Pastor of Mission Mobilization