The Hanging Bridge Near My School
by Oliver Carlos
When I was in high school, we had a subject called Work Education. Since my school was under UPLB, our curriculum was heavy on agriculture. We studied about crops and livestock. We actually cultivated the soil during class hours. But when we were in 4th year, we diverted a bit from agriculture, we worked in the machine shop. I remember carving my own CAT rifle from a block of wood, and constructing my own folding stool.
The machine shop where we worked in was about a kilometer away from UP Rural High School. My classmates and I just hiked to the said lab. To get there, we needed to cross a hanging bridge. That bridge was about 50 meters long spanning over a ravine that is 50 meters deep. At the floor of the ravine is the legendary Molawin Creek. The width of the bridge is around 1.5 meters only, but there were safety wire mesh walls on the sides so the people crossing it would not fall off.
Years later, the university fortified the bridge, they didn’t make it “hanging” anymore. I’m not a civil engineer, but I noticed that the floor of the bridge was now made of concrete, it was immovable and thus, it was very stable. The mesh wires at the sides still existed, but the width was still 1.5 meters. It may sound narrow, but it’s wide enough for motorcycles to cross over. I used to ride my motorcycle over the strengthened bridge during the late 1990s to the early 2000s.
The bridge looked like that for a long, long time until a very strong typhoon washed it away in the mid-2000s. If I’m not mistaken, the typhoon was Milenyo. The Molawin Creek got filled with rushing water up to the top of the ravine, and this caused the bridge to get literally erased from its foundations.
For more than a decade the chasm remained empty. The bridge was never rebuilt in that period. Only just recently that the university rehabilitated the bridge. Actually, it’s not a rehabilitation, but a total make-over. Today, you will find a strong concrete bridge. The bridge is now wide, it has 2 generous lanes for cars, and a bike lane on the side.
The most memorable moment I had on the bridge was when I crossed it using my motorcycle with my son who was around 4 years old. That was the time when the bridge wasn’t washed out yet by the typhoon. It was still narrow, but safe for motorcycles to go over, as the floor was sturdy concrete and it had wire mesh walls on both sides.
Before we crossed over, I paused at the foot of the bridge. My son asked me “Are we really going to cross that bridge?” I said, “Yes we will, just trust me.” Then I carefully drove my motorcycle across the bridge. I knew the bridge was perfectly safe because I have crossed it a hundred times before, I knew every square inch of the pavement like the palm of my hand.
My son is now in his 20s, and he still had vivid memories of that bridge-crossing experience. That’s probably the earliest recognizable experience he has in his memory. He admitted that he felt afraid at that time, but he just trusted his Dad, and presto! Everything went fine!
This reminded me of the bridge illustration we often see in Gospel tracts and on Christian shirts. Jesus is the bridge that connected sinful man on one side, and heaven on the other side. The ravine is death or hell, which is caused by sin. Man-made bridges like good works and human reasoning are short of spanning the chasm. Only the God-made bridge accomplishes the challenge of going over sin, death and hell. That bridge is Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. If we would just hear that Gospel story, believe with all our hearts that it’s the only way to the Father, repent from our sins, and trust Jesus to carry us to eternal life with him on the last day, then we would be truly in heaven indeed, just as promised by God. We just got saved by faith. John 5:24 (NIV) says:
“Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.”
In your heart, have you crossed over that bridge? Have you made that decision to walk on the bridge of life that God constructed for you? That bridge of life is the life that is fully surrendered to Jesus. Are you willing to leave your sins behind and take on the new life God is offering to you?
Just like in my story, all you need is a childlike faith in your Heavenly Father to cross you over from death to life.
