RIVERS, RAILROADS, FREEWAYS AND BRIDGES

Historic Waco Suspension Bridge spanning the Brazos River

Familiar with the phrase, "They're from the wrong side of the tracks."? When I was a small child growing up in Waco, Texas, I lived on the west side of the Brazos river while the African-American community lived on the east side of the river. That changed while I was in elementary school during the coming of Civil Rights legislation. But for decades before, the river had been the dividing line between peoples considered different from ourselves, even though we both worshiped the same God. 

When I was an adult, in Tampa, Florida, my wife, Sandra, and I bought a house on the east side of I-275 just off Hillsborough Ave. When we told our pastor, he said, "Oh, you must mean the west side?" The east side was not the affluent side. although it was catching up. (We won National Neighborhood of the Year in 2004 for beautification and reduction in drug and prostitution activity.) Earlier, the east side neighborhood had declined with the coming of the freeway. Small businesses without an exit ramp from the freeway for their street quickly withered and vanished away. They were on the "wrong side" of the freeway. The consequence was that other forms of "employment" found their way onto the streets. Sometimes rivers, railroads, and freeways can be as divisive as they are communicable. 

In today's interview from The Life of Meaning, we look at President Jimmy Carter's view of evangelization through deed. He tells two bridge-building stories. One is about the negotiations between Menachin Begin and Anwar Sadat at Camp David and the other about a missionary in Togo who dug wells and built real bridges across rivers.

Here are some of Carter's comments:

Anwar and Menachin and I could agree that we all worshiped the same God.

We worshiped a God of peace, forgiveness and accommodation.

I only attempt to evangelize those who are not of a faith tradition.

Regarding the young missionary to Togo who dug wells, fishponds, and built bridges across rivers and left behind eighty Chrisitan congregations when there were only two when he arrived:

He did things for other people in the name of Christ...not just to convert people who already have another established faith in the same God.

How can you be a bridge to others divided by the rivers, railroads and freeways we all construct in our lives?