Bridges are for Connecting

Recently, Timmy helped me put together a charming little bridge that I had purchased online.

It came in pieces in a box, and I unpacked and oiled each piece with a natural wood oil

to keep it from weathering.

For a long time, I had been wanting a bridge over the dry creek in our back yard, and finally realized that if I were going to have a bridge, I would have to:

1) Decide on my own.

2) Purchase on my own.

3) Put it together on my own.

So I did.

1)I decided what I wanted (which ended up being what I could afford and not totally what I wanted)

2) Purchased it 

and 3) Got Timmy to help me put it together.

It looked simple.

What is so hard about putting a little bridge together?

In the end, we had to take some of it apart three or four times to get the pieces together right, in the absence of any kind of instructions, which should have been in the box. And it still wasn't right.

Jonathan took one look at the funny way one part of it looked, and told us how it should be.

So then Timmy fixed it the way it should have been.

I do not know how to build bridges. That was obvious.

But I wanted a bridge.  

And I succeeded. After several tries, and asking different ones for help, I got me a bridge, and it is built, and there it is, a small apparatus that connects one side of the stony creek bed to the other.

It doesn't really matter whether a bridge stretches across a shallow creek bed, or over Royal Gorge 1000 feet below.

A bridge is for connecting.
Royal Gorge where my brother Gabriel's family took some of my children with them a few weeks ago when they were here.

Sometimes you need a bridge between you and someone or something else.
What is between you may be as small and shallow as our dry creek bed,
or as deep and impossible as the Royal Gorge.

You don't know how to make the bridge, and the ones who have the skill can't do it for you.

You have to build the bridge yourself.

And when you can't get it built right, you have to backtrack and try again.

And you might flop again.

But you keep trying.

You try and flop, and you try again, and you wish for instructions to follow, and you feel your own inability and lack of strength and smarts. 

You feel like a little kid that doesn't know anything.

So you have to ask for help. 

Maybe you ask your husband, or your dad, or your brother, or your pastor, or you give up on all of them and ask God.

God loves bridges.
He sent His own Son to be a Bridge--a Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.
Jesus, be our Bridge today--connecting us poor humans to the heavenly Father.

And help us with the bridges we need between us and others.

We know we need bridges, but in our own strength we can't build it.

Show us how to build the bridge, how to build or mend the relationship,

how to take the little step that will result in You reaching out to us with Your great big step,

and we'll praise You with all our hearts.