The Greatest Bridge is the Cross
April 13, 2011 (Wednesday)
When one walks across the Royal Gorge bridge, he is 955 feet above the Arkansas River. For 74 years, it was the highest bridge in the world. It has been surpassed in height, however, by five bridges, four of which are in China and one in New Guinea.
The purpose of the Royal Gorge bridge, built for $350,000 in 1929, was to encourage tourism. People walk on the planks that make up the roadway, but the bridge has never been part of a roadway for travel. Through the years, many other tourist attractions have been added to the area adjacent to the bridge, making it an amusement park.
Most bridges, however, are built to meet a need. People need to get across a river or a chasm of some kind. Some spans are more like overpasses, generally called viaducts, over a railroad yard, for example. The Atchafalaya Basin Bridge is actually two parallel bridges in the US state of Louisiana between Baton Rouge and Lafayette, which carries Interstate 10 over the Atchafalaya Basin. With a total length of 18.2 miles, it is the tenth longest bridge in the world. The longest bridge in the world is the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway in New Orleans, and it is 24 miles long.
One might say that the Cross of Jesus Christ is the longest bridge, because it fills the widest chasm ever known, the gap between sinful mankind and holy God. Sin separates people from God. A great gap exists between sin and holiness. Jesus came to bridge that gap. From the cross, Jesus stretched forth his hand to rescue us from eternal damnation and joined hands with the Father to make that spiritual connection. We come to the Heavenly Father through His Son.