Thinking about my dear mother who passed at only 42. She was such a precious angel of a person and had such a close walk with the Lord. She always loved the underdog and there was not a pretentious bone in her body. I remember hearing Mom pray sometimes her prayer time got pretty loud and could be heard for quite a way off. She would pray in the spirit and in the understanding for hours and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning.
I had to share this and the launching pad for this writing because much of what I will share here is coming from my love for her and the prompting of the Holy Spirit. I struggled for years that someone like my Mom would meet such a tragic end and since she took her own life I had a long road ahead of me trying to reconcile all that with God.
Decades have passed and God was good to me and has helped me and my family to heal a great deal. Now that the dust has settled and I am in a place where I can ask God out of a sincere wish to understand how this happened and where he was during her midnight hour and could it have been a different outcome.
After all these years in being in so much better of a place in my own life I felt led to seek God for these answers “one more time”. I have to honestly say though that deep down in I thought I might come up with nothing as I had so many times before. I thought to myself “God if you can enlighten me on this it would be a much-appreciated revelation”. I was at this point in my life with the prospect that I might never have an answer until I have made it home as I surrendered this to God long ago.
As I prayed God began to show me a bridge. The shape of the bridge was arched so the highest point was in the center. The bridge didn’t even span more than just a few feet and then it stopped with the edge just hanging out into mid-air. I also noticed there wasn’t any water under it and no people or life was around just emptiness and desolation. I asked God why the bridge was unfinished and why the barren landscape.
The Holy Spirit spoke to me that this represented our journey on earth toward heaven. I let this sink in for a minute and He continued to give me more insight. When Jesus died on the cross, hung his head and cried with a loud voice “It is finished” that bridge to heaven for us was completed. I could see in the spirit and the Lord died and the ground shook and the rocks split the other half of that bridge was being lifted, welded and locked into place. For all eternity, this bridge would stand for those that would believe on Jesus Christ to have free passage.
Then the Holy Spirit showed me the reason for the incomplete bridge. This was the view that we often get during our life’s struggles working our way home. You may remember these struggles starting in your early childhood like my mother and the suffering is so bad the bridge to heaven just seems to stop in mid-air. Or maybe like me you have it hit you hard in early adulthood and years of repressed anxiety and depression leave you lying on the broken edge of that bridge reaching out into the darkness. No matter what the defining moment like this looks like it does have the common landscape of emptiness and desolation.
This the Lord said to me is the disconnect that brings life to a breaking point for so many of my children. When they become unable to see that the bridge is completed then it appears to them to be the end and no hope is in sight to make it across.
I ask God if there was a way we could not lose sight of the “completed bridge” to the other side so we would not lose hope and give up. He told me that I wasn’t seeing the full perspective of the bridge and my question what short sighted. He said the journey of our lives is not measured in years and not matter if we live 42 years or 102 years God can still complete the beautiful story of our lives.
Then He reminded me of this passage of scripture: “See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”
He said that even when we grow so weary that we are no longer able to see Him, He never takes his eyes off of us. In fact, He has engraved our very names on the palm of His hand before we ever leave the womb.
I started to understand what God was saying to me. No matter how long one of his children live, or how their journey ends they are still standing firmly on the bridge that is connected all the way from one side to the other.
The bridge is hard for us to see when we have to look beyond what we are going through in our life “right now”. If you are in high school and things are going bad the bridge doesn’t seem to go any farther than that semester. If you are in a bad relationship the bridge seems to drop off if that relationship should ever end. So many times, in our lives we are not going to be able to feel or see the connection of the bridge to the other side.
I don’t know if understanding this would have changed my Mom’s story or not. Even if with this knowledge her story may have been the same. I understand now more than ever though that God had Mom’s name engraved in his palm and never let her down. He completed the beautiful picture of her life as only He could do. I don’t want to take a bad moment or even a few rough years and make that the central focus. I see now that God puts the focus on the picture as a whole and the way that he frames the life stories for each of his children always ends up a true work of art.
I ask that if you are reading this and find yourself laying on the end of the bridge without hope, please let these words minister hope to you. I’m going to ask the Holy Spirit right now to open your eyes and remove the blinders the enemy has placed upon you from your current suffering. God let us see the full and glorious bridge you have built from end to end. God let us stand back up and pull back our shoulders and let you take all those burdens off our shoulders. Give us the strength to step out on faith where it looks like the bridge stops. Just as soon as our foot comes down Father we thank you we will feel solid rock beneath us. In the name of Jesus Christ, I ask this and thank you for it Lord.
As I bring this story to a close I want to share what I feel is the call to action for all of us as God’s children moving along in a broken world. We don’t know where the wind comes from or where it goes and we cannot see it with our eyes. In much the same way, we cannot see this bridge with our physical eyes but we do know that like the unseen wind it is there. We have not yet seen the other side but we know where we are going. Our goal is to keep the bridge in sight by not getting completely absorbed in our current struggle. What we must do is press on even when the bridge appears to drop off into thin air. We are guaranteed the bridge continues on.
It is not up to us to measure the success of crossing this bridge by achieving a certain number of years or specific accomplishment. God has appointed unto every man a certain number of days and God has established and cemented our relationship with Him before the foundations of the world. When God said “nothing can separate us” that is exactly what He meant and that is the reason the bridge will always reach from shore to shore for us who He has loved enough to call His precious children.
Thank you Lord hardly seems like enough but truly we thank and praise you for making a way for us where there was no way. For building a bridge out of the body and blood of you only begotten Son that we could live in eternal joy with you and be joint Aires with Christ Jesus. What a beautiful life story you have secured for each of us that is formed by your loving hands. Nothing in this life can change your beautiful plan for us and we judge not glory of our ending on the temporal things of this world. Our lives here are like a vapor. Leading the best life we can is our goal, but our story has already been so beautifully secured by you precious Father.
