thrashing bee’s

Monday May 16^th, Acts 2: 45 Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46 Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.  When older people, like myself, remember the good old days, what they often remember is how the need to work together played out in community.  My dad was one of the last holdouts to get a combine for harvesting the grain.  Threshing required community, people working together for the common good of all, and that is what we did.  In the Midwest there are a number of places where they hold thrashing bee’s where all those who remember these grand old machines can come and spend a day participating and remembering the good old days of a community’s working together for the common good.  Sometimes they bring their children or grandchildren along to experience the joy of those days of yore.  All too often when it is over they go home and at the next election vote down the school bonds because they don’t have any kids in school and property taxes are already too high.  The lesson of thrashing remains back on the farm until they venture out for the next year remembrance of community, after all who needs community when you’ve got it made?  And perhaps that is the problem.  We learned very well how to handle our dependence, now we are able to keep our dependence hidden and pretend it is not there.