Building bridges

IT is strangely ironic that in the news recently we saw Russia reported as building a new bridge, longer than any other in Russia and the United States of America (or at least President Trump) once again speaking of plans to build a wall on its Mexican border.

The bridge will connect Russia to Kerch on the Crimean Peninsula, which it forcibly, annexed from Ukraine in March 2014.

It is a 19km (12-mile) road-rail bridge.

It will not impede shipping, as it will stand 35m (115ft) above the water and the four-lane highway is designed for a capacity of 40,000 vehicles per

24-hour period.

Meanwhile the American wall may be made of bombproof concrete, covered with giant solar panels, house tunneling alarms and even have storage for nuclear waste.

Whatever your political views, walls are fixed barriers to keep people out (or in) while bridges are designed to bring people together.

All of us are involved in Bridge building or constructing walls in our lives with regards to our relationships with other people.

Some of us are open and friendly while others are like “a closed book.”

The Bible makes it clear that we have all built a massive wall around us to keep God out of our lives, as well as the people who have hurt, upset, irritated, or annoyed us.

The Good News Christianity proclaims is that

Jesus through His death on the cross “has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” between human beings and also between us and God, (Ephesians 2:14-16) “His purpose… to reconcile both of them to God (Jews and Gentiles) through the cross, by which He put to death their hostility.”

In so doing Jesus became the bridge between

God and humanity, and it is through Him that the way to God has been opened. Jesus spans the gulf between us and God, and invites us to cross that bridge of faith.