Daily Wisdom 06-26-2008 Bridges to Nowhere

Last Summer I was on a river trip with some young people, a river that had not been nearly so friendly only three months before. The Spring rains had been record breakers and the resulting floods had even redirected parts of the river. Now our guide took us down a whole new channel of the river that hadn't even been there three months earlier and he pointed out this palatial home that was built near the river by a multi-millionaire. The flood had suddenly made his home very vulnerable. It was saved only by a hastily constructed brick wall. A lot of the landscaping around that home couldn't be saved like the bridges, for example. You see, since this had been just a little stream before the flood, the home owner had built some charming wooden bridges across it at several points. Now, the bridges weren't really destroyed, they were just relocated. As we moved downstream we saw a charming wooden bridge sitting in the middle of an island of mud in the middle of the river. Later we saw another bridge, pretty intact, just sitting on the river bank. Oh, they were nice bridges, they just didn't go anywhere.

One of the most defining, most bottom lining statements in all of the Bible is our word for today from the Word of God. It's Acts 4: 12, the disciples of Jesus have just been talking about the Name of Jesus Christ. Now listen to this. . . "Salvation is found in no one else. For there is no other name under Heaven given to men by which we must be saved." In our age of pluralism, and tolerance, and eclectic spirituality, those are pretty loaded words about Jesus.

Salvation is in no one else, we must be saved by His Name. How can this be? Mankind seems to know instinctively that we need some kind of bridge to get to God. We feel the distance between us and the One who made us, maybe you do? So we're trying to discover what will get us to Him. So we have the Protestant bridge to God - with good works that are supposed to take us to God. . . and the Catholic bridge - with good Catholic things to do . . . and the Jewish bridge . . . and the Muslim bridge . . . and the Buddhist bridge . . . and the Hindu Bridge . . . and the bridge of New Age Spirituality. And our human nature wants to believe that all those bridges end up the same place with God. But Jesus defied our preferences when He made this incredible claim, He said "I am the Way, the Truth, the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." In other words, even though all those religious bridges are beautiful, they're bridges to nowhere.

Why? Because of what it is that stands between us and the God we're desperately trying to get to. In simple words, it's a death penalty. The Bible says, the wages of sin is death. All of us have missed the way we were created to live, with God running things. We've hijacked our lives from our creator, we've run our lives our way, and the penalty is death. And you can't pay a death penalty by any amount of being good. There's only one way, someone has to die, and someone did - but not the one who deserved to die for my sin. I should have. But the Bible says, "Christ died for our sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God." Out of His amazing love, Jesus, God's sinless son, did the dying for the sinning we did. And while there are many religions, there is only one Savior. And only He can take me across that gap between me and my creator.

So everything depends on what you do with Jesus. It may be that you've been on a spiritual bridge trying to find a relationship with God but it's been a bridge to nowhere. But right now, God, who loves you so much, is pointing you to the bridge He built to bring you to Him - it's the cross where His one and only Son paid for you. The bridge God has provided cost Him what mattered most to Him - His Son. Don't depend on any other bridge, to bridge to nowhere.

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Today's Daily Wisdom is written by Ron Hutchcraft, based on his popular "A Word With You" broadcast (Available in transcripts or real audio format.) Ron Hutchcraft Ministries has been on-line with GCN since February, 1996, providing practical answers to real life issues. Copyright Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc.