Bridge Out: Following the Directional Signposts

It was night, and I was by myself, driving through the dark countryside, middle-of-nowhere, U.S.A., in the days before GPS. It was the exact situation my dad had always been afraid his daughter would find herself in. It's probably just as well that he didn't know just exactly where I was at that moment.

I had been visiting my parents during my year at Rosedale Bible College, and had just finished up a wonderful weekend with them. At the end of my time in North Carolina, I'd climbed into my rather ancient Dodge Spirit to drive back to the epicenter-of-cornfields, Ohio, to continue my term.

But by the time I reached epicenter-of-cornfields, the backroads looked alike in the dark. I pulled over and studied my map (for those who are unaware, maps were these prehistoric pieces of parchment with hieroglyphic markings etched into them showing all the roads in a certain area). I figured out that I was on one of two roads that was supposed to lead me to my destination, and the road on the right looked minutely nearer to it than the one on the left.

So I folded up the map, pulled back onto the road, and hung a right.

My headlights lit the lonely road, but they didn't pierce the darkness that far in front of me, and were there supposed to be so many turns? I rounded a corner and screeched to a stop. In front of me was an orange and white striped barricade. 

"Bridge Out."

Beyond the sign, I could see the remains of what had been a small bridge, but it no longer stretched the entire way along the expanse it had covered. A big black hole gaped between the end of the road and the beginning of the bridge.

I reached for the map... again. I unfolded it... again. I memorized the road... again, and then I did a U-turn and headed back the way I'd come. As I drove, I passed at least two signs, previously unnoticed, that warned me of "Bridge Out," but they weren't as prominent as the barricade in front of which I'd found myself, and I'd been concentrating so hard on seeing in the dark and staying on the road, I hadn't been paying attention to the warning signs. 

I reached the spot finally where I'd pulled over before, and this time... I took a left.

On that night, at that time, there was one way forward, and I discovered that following the appropriate directional signposts was quite helpful in my goal of not plunging my car into a black abyss. 

Jesus is still reclining at the table during the Passover Feast with eleven disciples. Judas Iscariot is busy getting his buddies over at the chief priest's home to come pick up Jesus and take him back for trial, and the rest of the disciples stick around for some good, solid teaching from the Rabbi. 

John 14:5-14 starts out with Thomas, who has recently become one of my favorite disciples. He's got quite the bad rap, right? He's known as "Doubting Thomas" (what a moniker to carry around for 2,000+ years!), but his faith and honesty keep cropping up in these last few chapters (check out the post I wrote about his faith a few days back). 

Jesus has just finished telling his friends that He is going ahead of them to prepare a place for them in heaven with the Father, and He says: "You know the way to the place where I am going." 

For the record, He's just gone over this material with Peter, a conversation during which comes out that Peter is going to disown Jesus three times. Now, a few sentences later, when Jesus says, "You know the way to the place where I am going," Thomas speaks up to bring his bit of brilliance to the table.

"Lord, we don't know where You are going, so how can we know the way?"

Honest Thomas. It sounds so much better than Doubting Thomas. He's the one sitting at his desk with the question mark on his face and the blank paper in front of him. "I don't get it, Teacher. Can you explain it one more time?"

And Jesus says this: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through me."

That's quite a load of responsibility to carry, and only Jesus could have done it. That same load would break anyone else except the Son of God. Jesus patiently explains -- again -- His divine role with these words: "If you really knew Me, you would know My Father as well. From now on, you do know Him and have seen Him." 

Philip says: "Lord, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us."

Wait... what? 

To reiterate: THREE years, COUNTLESS miracles, CONSTANT statements of divinity... No wonder Jesus did a bit of a face-palm here.

"Don't you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen Me has seen the Father! How can you say, 'Show us the Father'? Don't you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in Me?"

Philip's the guy at the desk next to Thomas who has just called the Teacher's attention to the fact that he hasn't been paying attention. As a teacher, and as a student, I am well aware of this feeling. 

I've been the student who receives the teacher's level look as I twitch nervously in my seat ("Um... what were we supposed to do?"), and I've been the teacher who has leveled the look at the clueless student ("I just got done explaining the assignment."). 

I get Philip. At the same time, I get Jesus' astonishment. How did Philip miss this?

There have been directional notations everywhere! 

I was talking to someone yesterday who brought up the idea that the burning bush in Exodus 3 might just as well have been on fire the whole time, always burning... but Moses didn't see it until he looked at it. We don't know that, obviously, but the idea is: sometimes the map lays out the directions right in front of us, but we're driving with our eyes closed.

I blew right by at least two of those "Bridge Out" signs before I reached the barricade, because I wasn't paying attention to the right things.

I had a map, but I wasn't reading the road signs. I didn't have my eyes open to the Way. Paul says in Ephesians 1:18: "I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know." Know what? Three things: "1.) The hope to which He has called you, 2.) the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and 3.) His incomparably great power for us who believe" -- which, by the way, is the same incomparably great power that broke death, according to Ephesians 1:19: "That power is like the working of His mighty strength, which He exerted in Christ when He raised Him from the dead..."

One of the mind-blowing things about Jesus is that He is both the Map and the Road Signs. He is the Way. Outside of Him, there is no other way. Any efforts to reach the Father will plunge us into a black abyss that leads nowhere; it is only because Jesus bridges the gap between death and life that we can safely cross to the Father, to eternity with Him.

How do I know Jesus is the only way?

Pay attention to the signage, y'all. It's all there. That bush has maybe always been burning; we simply have to open our eyes so we can see it.