Bridges Or Walls? No MOre IMportant Time To Decide.

​Exactly 4 years ago, I wrote the following words:

You know, I waited until I was in my mid-30s to get married. I always said I wouldn't get married until I knew I'd never get divorced. That's because to me, based on a lot of cultural and spiritual ideals, the definition of marriage WAS not getting divorced.

Til death do us part.....

What I know now - it's possible to be so against divorce that you lose sight of what it takes to stay together. You can spend so much time and energy holding a stop sign up to divorce that you no longer have any idea what a green light looks or feels like in the marriage the stop sign is trying to protect.

Sometimes we can become so proud of ourselves for not being one of those people who gets divorced that we have no idea how unhealthy our fixation on not becoming one of them has made us.

I am reflecting on those words this morning with a broader lens. Not just the togetherness of a couple but the togetherness of a nation.

It feels like we've all become so sure about what we're against, so committed to holding up our stop signs, that we've lost sight of how to move forward together.

We rally against our opposition. We know what we won't tolerate. We know what we'll fight - and the extremes we're willing to go to in order to win that fight. But do we know what it looks like to truly say yes to one another, to pursue the hard and often fragile work of unity, to practice what it takes to stay together?

Because to me, from the 30,000 foot overhead view of our country, we aren't a country fighting for shared belonging, but a country fighting to decide who really belongs. It's one thing to walk away from a marriage saying I no longer belong here, it's quite another to point a finger at someone and suggest you've never belonged here at all.

A nation, like a marriage, doesn’t thrive on stop signs. It thrives on green lights - the deliberate choices to listen, to compromise, to seek common good, to believe that “we” is still possible.

When all we know is what we’re against, we live with walls. When we remember what we’re for, we can build bridges.

I fear we have become a nation obsessed with walls.

I fear we have lost sight of the sweet and precious motivation found in the heart of a bridgebuilder.

My heart's desire every day is to follow the heart of the grandest bridgebuilder I've ever known - Jesus. The one who came to build a bridge between heaven and earth. The one who declared the strength of that bridge will always be love.

A love that knows no walls.

The Romans murdered that bridgebuilder, but the bridgebuilder went to his grave inviting them in and not kicking them out.

Father forgive them, he said.....

Forgive them - words few walls can withstand.

Words that will always ring out as more green light than stop sign.