Working Together is Not All That Bad!
In communities that are making a serious attempt to improve their economic situation, the people always have a need to work together. Economic development is always a task for many hands, hearts and voices.
___/___ Collaboration in Community
The community works together in reliable interdependence. The community functions as a bed of multiple constituencies and stakeholders, for the good of everyone. Interaction between groups and/or individuals is supportive and effective.
Ezra 1
Generations of Hebrews spent centuries of slavery in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys of what is modern day Iraq. When the time came to be released and returned to the Promised Land, a terrible temptation must surely have passed through the survivors.
After the years in captivity, the people must have felt compelled to run, not walk, back to the land few of them had seen. The ordinary temptation would seem to have been to ignore community and race across the desert. It could have been something like the Oklahoma Land Grab or the gold rushes of the 19th century. It might have even been close to the opening of a department store on Friday after Thanksgiving.
But no, the repatriates apparently come back to the promised land in some orderly manner. The sense of community was protected. Except for the relationships with the Samaritans, who had been accused of collaborating with the Assyrians while their cousins were taken into slavery, things were orderly.
The people apparently returned in some decent order. The re-established their communities. They rebuild their systems of collaboration and control, their synagogues, their markets and their city walls. However, they rebuilt only by re-taking the land and facilities from those who had stayed behind when the leaders were taken to Iraq.
The United States is an interesting experience in human activity. Although we are many differing faiths, abilities, dreams and persuasions, we can and do work together. We are a people torn apart by civil war, yet able to recover to the support of civil rights.
We have changed from a rural nation to an industrial nation, yet work at remaining small town in spirit. We have chosen to defend personal freedoms, yet we become nervous when anyone uses their freedom to speak disparagingly of our system.
In short, much of what keeps us together is our choice to be together. It is our common work for the good of all the world that makes us viable.
When disaster strikes, it is common to see military personnel, church and nonprofit volunteers, business leaders, utility workers and many others sweating together. Pastors shovel sand into bags held by company presidents. Moslems struggle to find and rescue Christian children caught in the aftermath of tornadoes. This is the nature of the whole North American continent.
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