All for one and one for all

“There's a constant tension between the excitement of new people and security with one person. If you go with excitement, you create chaos; you hurt people. There's jealousy, and it gets very messy. If you have security, it can be boring, and you die inside because of all the opportunities missed.”
--Alain de Botton

By Alex P. Vidal

NEW YORK CITY -- Who do two bricks in a building and one Oreo cookie in common?
They’re held together by the stuff between.
In the case of bricks, we find the mortar that bonds one brick to another.
The Oreo cookie has the all-important white filling.
Because they just weren’t getting along the apostle Paul once asked a friend to be the mortar of filling between two women.
Paul’s job as an apostle was to “plant” churches. He later “watered” them through the spiritual teaching in his letters, which served as Paul’s voice when he couldn’t visit in person.
In fact, he wrote to the church in the Roman colony of Philippi while he was in prison.
In the midst of this letter about joy, Paul sadly had to address the disharmony between two women, Euodia and Syntyche. According to Saints and Scoundrels in the Bible, Paul enlisted the help of a third party “fearing that these women would not work out the problem on their own.”
Not much is known about this man except that he was a “loyal yokefellow” (Philippians 4:3).

BURDER

“This image brings to mind two beasts of burden linked together under a common yoke,” explains Saints and Scoundrels in the Bible. “He was someone who worked closely with Paul, and perhaps was a leader in the church in Philippi. This man would now be an important part of this mission to patch up the disagreement.”
When tension happens within a church body, everybody is affected,
Imagine being the one charged with the task of bringing two angry women face-to-face.
With a sticky problem like this, some people might have hesitated to get involved out of fear of being caught in the cross fire. So Paul had to call for a volunteer.
This may have been an assignment for which Paul’s friend was perfectly suited, or it may have been a dreaded chore.
Nevertheless, Paul felt that he was the one who could help these two irate women patch up their differences.
The text never reveals the outcome of the intervention of Paul’s yokefellow.
But this story illustrates the truth that in the church, like Alexander Dumas’ Three Musketeers, it’s “all for one, and one for all.”