“I will make you a community of peoples.” – Genesis 48:4
When I went off to college one of the first people I met was a guy named Ralph who lived in the same dorm down the hall from me. Ralph was a graduate from one of the big city high schools in a wealthy section of Houston, the exact polar opposite of the small Texas Panhandle town where I grew up. At first I did not think much of it. We both, after all, had proven to have attained the grades and credentials to gain admission into the same competitive university. But Ralph was a curious sort of guy who found my rural upbringing to be a bit of a novelty which led to a great deal of conversation about the differences. Since small town society was all I had ever known I was at first taken aback, not that Ralph was insulting, rather I had naively assumed people, Americans in general and Texans in particular, had much more in common than differences.
Ralph and I never saw each other again after that first semester, but I will forever remain grateful for those late-night dorm room conversations that helped prepare me and my future family to become happy and prosperous urban dwellers – like Ralph’s family had been – never to return to my rural roots. Except, as the old saying goes, “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can never take the country out of the boy.”
Fast forward many years later, I was asked to speak to a roomful of Wall Street investment bankers in New York about a rather sensitive issue pertaining to the internal culture of our investment banking firm that was having a negative impact on relationships, and consequently the growth of our business. I felt like I had gotten the short straw on that assignment; that is until I remembered my conversations with Ralph and his curiosity about rural life, which led me to share some stories about my experience growing up in a small town and what it was like to live together in community where we all knew each other, looked out for one another, and helped each other out.
In speaking to Jacob regarding the Promise Land God made it clear, “I will make you a community of peoples.” Community! That was the key message that day, and perhaps what Ralph’s curious mind was fishing for. In small towns it is sort of an organic thing, but communities exist everywhere, as I have learned, including big cities. It’s any place where people know each other, look out for one another, and help each other out.