What kind of bridges are you building?

Last week, I read Leadership Gold: Lessons I've Learned from a Lifetime of Leading by John C. Maxwell. It was a very good book on leadership and I learned a lot from it. At the very end of the book, Mr. Maxwell included a poem by a Tennessee poet named Will Allen Dromgoole. The poem, entitled "The Bridge Builder" made an impression on me and I would like to share it with you.

“The Bridge Builder”
An old man, going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To chasm, vast and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.
The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fears for him;
But he turned when safe on the other side
And built a bridge to span the tide.

“Old man,” said a fellow pilgrim near,
“You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again must pass this way;
You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide—
Why build you a bridge at the eventide?”

The builder lifted his old gray head:
“Good friend, in the path I have come,” he said,
“There followeth after me today
A youth whose feet must pass this way.
This chasm that has been naught to me
To that fair-haired youth may a pit-fall be,
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building the bridge for him.”

Each one of us is building a bridge for those who will follow us. What kind of bridge are we building? Will it be sturdy enough to withstand the test of time? Will it be safe enough that even the feeblest child can cross it?

With Christ as our sure foundation, let's do our best with the resources that we have been given so that the bridges we build for those who are following in our footsteps will withstand the tests that are placed upon them. (See 1 Corinthians 3:10-15).