Shortly after we moved from Columbia, they began work on a bridge on Highway 378 . It’s still not completed. It’s been almost three years and as we have moved between the city where we lived and the city where we now live, we have watched the cranes slowly put a new bridge in place. The work has not been easy, especially as rain pours in, but they keep working slow and steady, piece by piece.
It isn’t convenient to have this bridge being repaired. It makes the commute a little bit longer not only because there is a whole side of the highway unusable, but because construction vehicles have to come in and out of the bridge repair site. Most of the time I dread this part of the drive knowing that some people who don’t know the road will have to slam on brakes to get into the correct lane for the detour, but this weekend my five-year-old looked out the window and exclaimed, “The bridge is looking so good!” Her perspective and wonder at the bridge-building process gave me new eyes to see the true feat that is being constructed.
In an election year, made this is just the image I needed to remind myself that the most important work we can do as humans is bridge building, looking for ways to connect to each other and the Divine. It is hard work and takes heavy equipment along with more than a little patience, but the pathways we create when we build bridges truly as a feat of kindness and love.