Joining Together

On a sunny Saturday, fifteen years ago, a semi-truck pulled into our rural school parking lot. Community members of all ages opened boxes of various-sized parts and pieces to build an amazing new playground. 

None of us had ever done anything like this before. Someone quipped it couldn’t be any more difficult than building something from Ikea. We split into groups and got to work. Our local church fed us while also coming alongside to help build.

As I look at the photos, I remember all those smiling faces. We are older now. The youngest kids who helped us were the first to play on the wonderful new equipment. Now they’ve all graduated. The older teens in the photo have gone onto their careers. Some folks have moved away. Sadly, a few have passed on. 



The project didn’t begin on this day. Over a year’s worth of community fundraising and partnerships made it a reality—but all those meetings and events brought us together to do something none of us could do on our own. 



The playground remains a testimony to what happens when folks work together for the good of others. If anything has been missing since those days of community bonding, is the chance to do something like this again.


The photos remind me of how it was. Maybe, just maybe, the journey forward from two years of a pandemic, and years of political discord, is to find something unifying to work on together—not for ourselves, but for those who will follow us.


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