The Way Home
The news started spreading shortly after noon on Tuesday. Someone had hit the Highway 87 bridge over I-65 about a mile north of our church campus. My phone started blowing up with texts and phone calls telling me about it, and checking on us to make sure everyone here was okay. I went to social media to find out the details, and the first thing I pulled up said there was a "bridge collapse" with multiple cars involved and lots of injuries.
As the story developed, and all of the local TV stations sent their reporters to the site, we were able to see what the scene looked like and realized it was a serious event, but it wasn't like the bridge had crumbled completely and was laying in pieces across the interstate. There was plenty of rubble, and questions about the stability of the bridge, but certainly not as bad as initially reported.
That is, unless you were trying to get home in Calera later that day.
As I am sure you know by now, I-65 southbound was closed for the rest of the day, while they cleaned up debris and made sure the bridge wasn't going to cave in on drivers passing under it. And of course, the bridge itself was also closed, while they determined whether it was structurally sound enough to hold up. Late that evening, the southbound side of the interstate was finally opened to traffic, as was one lane of the bridge.
In the meantime, there were tens of thousands of people trying to get home in south Shelby County during a Tuesday rush hour, not to mention all the truckers and travelers who were just passing through town heading south. But with the main thoroughfare going in that direction now closed, traffic was a nightmare. Drivers were forced to get off the interstate an exit earlier in Alabaster, and were re-routed either down Highways 31 or 119. Traffic was backed up for hours, while people tried any other imaginable alternate route to get where they were going. But of course, there weren't any.
I imagine for some of you, your commute turned from maybe a half hour on a normal day to several hours of sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on Tuesday. For me, I was fortunate to be going north to get home, so I drove against the traffic, looking into the faces of all of those despairing drivers sitting for hours in their cars.
I'm sure you are asking, where is he going with this? Is there a spiritual lesson? I think there is.
Jesus told His disciples the night before He was arrested on His way to the cross, "I am the way, the truth and the life, and no come comes to the Father except through Me." (John 14:6) So, He was saying, He was the only pathway from where we are, to where we want to go. If we are to have a relationship with God the Father, there's only one way to get there and that is Jesus.
In today's world, some see that as exclusive and intolerant. How dare Christians say that Jesus is the only way to heaven. But that's what Jesus said Himself, and either He is right--which I believe He is--or He missed it on that one, and that means He was not the perfect Son of God after all. We can't have it both ways. Either Jesus is the only way to get to God, or He's not the way to God at all.
We can try to find alternate routes, as many people do, but they will always come up empty. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount that there are many who choose the broad road, that leads to destruction, instead of His narrow way, that leads to life. (Matthew 7:13-14). We are called to choose the narrow road, which again, is the only route we have to get home to the Father.
One of my favorite ways of illustrating the truths of the gospel in sharing about Jesus with someone who is lost is through what is called the "bridge illustration." I have drawn it on a napkin across a table dozens of times over the years, and there are also helpful gospel tracts that use the same illustration. It pictures holy God on one side, and sinful man on the other, with a chasm between the two. That gulf between is our sin, which separates us from God. At that point in the illustration, you draw a bridge across it, that forms a cross. It was Jesus' work on the cross that bridged the gap between holy God and sinful humanity, so that we could be reconciled to Him.
You knock out that bridge, and we are hopeless, stuck where we are in our sin, without a way to get to God. But Jesus came to bridge that gap, to be "the way, the truth and the life" that allows us to have a direct path to God. That is the good news of the gospel that we are all banking our eternity on, and the message we are called to share with those who are still stuck where they are, trying to get home.
I am so glad that they were able to get I-65 back open, and the bridge over it at least partially open for now. But more than that, I am thankful that Jesus made a way for us so that we could know the Father, through faith in Him. I sure hope you know Him today.
I am praying for you, as I hope you are for me, and I look forward to seeing you Sunday.
--Pastor Ken
