Building Bridges

A wonderful Super Bowl morning to everyone, I hope this day finds you doing great. Today I want to write about building walls or building bridges. In life we go through periods of doing both. Sometimes depending on our perception of the circumstances we build big walls and other times we build small walls. Either way a wall is a wall. We also need to be bridge builders in life. Meaning that when we have the tools and equipment to build a wall just think what would or could happen if we expended that same energy to build a bridge. 

Often times walls can stand for a lifetime and oddly enough bridges can crumble and fall. Isn’t that the way it happens in relationships? We can build walls or divisions that can last us a lifetime and create bitterness and hate along the way. Or we can build bridges and as they crumble and decay repair and replace the parts that are failing. WOW how cool would that be if we spent our lives repairing bridges instead of painting graffiti on tall walls?

I want to share a story and I sure hope you take the time to read it and let it resonate in your own life. Once it is read please come back later and read it again.

 Once upon a time two brothers who lived on adjoining farms fell into conflict.

It was the first serious rift in 40 years of farming side by side, sharing machinery, and trading labor and goods as needed without a hitch.Then the long collaboration fell apart. It began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into a major difference, and finally it exploded into an exchange of bitter words followed by weeks of silence.

 One morning there was a knock on John's door. He opened it to find a man with a carpenter's toolbox. "I'm looking for a few days work" he said."Perhaps you would have a few small jobs here and there I could help with? Could I help you?

"Yes," said the older brother. "I do have a job for you. Look across the creek at that farm. That's my neighbor, in fact, it's my younger brother.Last week there was a meadow between us and he took his bulldozer to the river levee and now there is a creek between us.

 Well, he may have done this to spite me, but I'll go him one better. See that pile of lumber by the barn?I  want you to build me a fence - - an 8-foot fence -- so I won't need to see his place or his face anymore."

The carpenter said, "I think I understand the situation. Show me the nails and the post hole digger and I'll be able to do a job that pleases you."

The older brother had to go to town, so he helped the carpenter get the materials ready and then he was off for the day. The carpenter worked hard all that day measuring, sawing, nailing, and hammering.

About sunset when the farmer returned, the carpenter had just finished his job. The farmer's eyes opened wide, his jaw dropped. There was no fence there at all.
 

It was a bridge -- a bridge stretching from one side of the creek to the other! A fine piece of work handrails and all -- and the neighbor, his younger brother, was coming across, his handoutstretched."You are quite a fellow to build this bridge after all I've said and done."

The two brothers stood at each end of the bridge, and then they met in the middle, taking each other's hand. They turned to see the carpenter hoist his toolbox on his shoulder.

"No, wait! Stay a few days. I've a lot of other projects for you," said the older brother.

"I'd love to stay on," the carpenter said, "but, I have many more love bridges to build."

As you go about your week please focus on building bridges. Walls can destroy where bridges can repair. Be a peace builder and enjoy the rewards that come from doing so. I read a quote today that sums up walls built in our hearts and lives and it goes like this. “When life has you drowning, do not worry your life guard walks on water.”

Life can drown us and our coldness to the world around us causes us to escape from reality with the CRACK pleasure of the day. This pleasure creates a wall that is difficult to tear down. When you see walls in your life being erected seek out the life guard because he is the only true bridge builder that builds a foundation that never crumbles.

Enjoy today by building a love bridge to the past, or the broken relationship, or the lost dream, or lost hope. A bridge can and will restore the life you seek yet struggle to find because it is hard to see over the wall that you and others have built. I say tear down that wall and enjoy the view from the beautiful bridges of life we all have built together.

Peace and love

Dale Childress