“Be A Bridge For People”
Categories: Church of Christ Bulletin Articles
Brother Brad Harrub, director and co-founder of Focus Press (see article) and co-editor of Think Magazine, wrote the following encouraging comments on Facebook this morning:
“Let me encourage you to be a bridge for people. Not a rickety old rope bridge, but a steel superstructure. Be something others can count on and rely on. Be a strong bridge that doesn’t get shaken in the storms of life. Bridge others to Christ. Even if it means humbling yourself to the point of letting others walk on you. Be a beautiful bridge that people want to come to.”
Brother Harrub’s above comments reminded me of the following poem by Will Allen Dromgoole entitled, “The Bridge Builder.”
An old man going a lone highway,
Came, at the evening cold and gray,
To a chasm vast and deep and wide.
Through which was flowing a sullen tide
The old man crossed in the twilight dim,
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.
“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting your strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day,
You never again will pass this way;
You’ve crossed the chasm, deep and wide,
Why build this bridge at evening tide?”
The builder lifted his old gray head;
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followed after me to-day
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been as naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be;
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him!”
Brethren and friends, as Brother Harrub and the above poem suggests, we must be a bridge for people.
As followers of Christ, we must be willing to (as Brother Harrub has written above) “bridge others to Christ, even if it means humbling yourself to the point of letting others walk on you.”
Let’s think about it! (cf. Matthew 5:43-48; Luke 6:27-28; Romans 12:14).