The World's Longest Bridge

The Brooklyn Bridge at night

John Roebling had a dream. He began working on it with smaller scale projects, culminating with his design for the Brooklyn Bridge. But he died before he could witness his dream's construction.

John's son Washington took over the project, completing the actual design work. He invented wire rope (steel cable) to take a structural load far greater than the hemp rope of the period could support. He invented a construction tool called the pressurized caisson, that allowed workers to lay the towers' foundations well below the East River's surface.

Considering the Brooklyn Bridge, architect Louis Kahn wrote, "Great art work is not the fulfilling of a desire, but the making of a new desire. The world never really needed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony until he wrote it, and now we couldn't live without it. Likewise, we didn't really need (the Brooklyn Bridge), ... but now that it's there, we couldn't live without it.”

Lake Pontchartrain Causeway

Beethoven

Another bridge took form in an architect's mind long before it was ever needed, a bridge that spanned far more than the Brooklyn Bridge's 6,000 feet. Longer even than the 24-mile-long, Lake Pontchartrain Causeway. It too was a father and son project, but rather than killing the Father, completing this project killed the Son. And while the Brooklyn Bridge inspired Lewis Kahn's romantic observations, we denizens of the world could not live beyond the veil of death without this Longest Bridge.

Though it is truly monumental, and one way or another its name is on nearly everyone's lips, no one can find it without the Guide. This Longest Bridge is not a structure, but a person: The incarnate Word of God, through whom the eternal Father made our universe, and without whom not one person will survive this short, mortal existence.

Our sin created the infinite gulf between ourselves and our Father God, but his love provided our Way back to himself, his perfect Truth, and his eternal Life(John 14:6). The Bible says of God's eternal Word, “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:10-14 ESV)

Yes, the name of Jesus is on many lips, either through praise, or through profanity. We praise him because his love led him to willingly submit to the worst, most degrading Roman torture imaginable; he chose death on the cross to reconcile his creation to himself after we willingly separated ourselves from him through sin. We profane him because most of us refuse to respond to his love with our own love, through obedience to his good news, the gospel of salvation through his blood.

Follow God's gospel to The World's Longest Bridge, and realizing you need him while you still have opportunity, get on. He's waiting, and he's nearer than we think.