Don't Look Down

There are lots of analogies to describe how the Christian fits into society, whether it involves being light or being salt or being fishermen or whatever. However, I think there’s room for another analogy in the mix: a bridge. After all, the Christian has to exist in two worlds: the spiritual world and the physical world. And, as I’m sure all of you know, those two worlds don’t really move in the same direction.

I liked the topic of plate tectonics in middle school, and it totally comes in handy here, because if a bridge spans two tectonic plates (i.e. the spiritual world and the physical world), it’s gonna find itself under a great amount of stress.

Ah, stress! The much-maligned companion of our lives! And, what do we try to do with much-maligned companions? We try to get rid of them! A very understandable human response!

And, that’s the temptation in this case. We try to retreat, to hedge our bets on one side of the bridge or the other.

The Spiritual Side of the Bridge - If you retreat to this side of the bridge, you’ll find yourself immersed in God. Not a bad thing, right? Well, seemingly not, but then you find yourself not doing anything with all that God-saturated energy. You stay buried in that blanket of spirituality, and you end up turning down opportunities to serve. It’s a place of piety. It’s also a place of fear (the fear of saying what you have to say) and, ultimately, a place of selfishness.

The Physical Side of the Bridge - If you retreat to this side of the bridge, you’ll find yourself with the perfect opportunity to be a beacon, dwelling amongst those most in need of hearing what God might have to say. And, that’s exactly what Jesus did, right? Well, the bad part is that you aren’t connected enough to God to be able to share what you need to share, and so you avoid speaking up. In the process, you get to enjoy some of those enticing earthly joys. It’s a place of indulgence. It’s also a place of fear (the fear of having something to say) and, ultimately, a place of selfishness.

Oh, but there’s another way to cop out, and it’s a technique I like to use. I like to run quickly from one side of the bridge to the other. Five minutes on the spiritual side, then five minutes on the physical side, and back again. And, by enjoying equal amounts of both extremes, they cancel each other out, right? If I move fast enough, it seems like I’m just standing still in the middle, right? Yeah, how convenient that would be. But, did you notice that retreating to EITHER side of the bridge results in fear and selfishness; it doesn’t matter which. So, playing the back-and-forth game leaves you and me with the same amount of ineffectiveness.

So, where are we supposed to be? Right in the middle…all the time. By being that bridge between the two tectonic plates, we are signing up for being in the place with the MAXIMUM amount of stress. Think about straddling the San Andreas Fault. That’s where God calls us to be - standing directly over the crevasse between Heaven and Earth.

It’s not for the fainthearted, and it’s not for the pious, and it’s not for the indulgent. And, here’s the odd (and a bit painful) irony of the situation: if you find yourself at your maximum threshold for stress, that’s perhaps an indication that you’re on the right track. As I said, not for the fainthearted…