The is the second of three posts reflecting on the presbytery and the General Assembly. I will return to following the lectionary for my July 26 post after I return from vacation.

This post is the result of seeing the following picture at The Way Forward Committee at the General Assembly as they wrestled with the current structure of the General Assembly.

The Choluteca Bridge in Honduras

This is a picture of the Choluteca Bridge in Honduras. This bridge was an engineering feat. Because of the drastic weather, hurricanes and floods that sometimes ravage Honduras this bridge was built to endure even the worst of hurricanes. It took two years to build it and only a few hours to make it useless. It was built between 1996 and 1998. Shortly after it was built in 1998 Hurricane Mitch swept violently across the country causing hundreds of millions of dollars of damage and killing over 7,000 people. It was a Category 5 hurricane–as bad as they come.

But there was good news. The Choluteca Bridge stood the test. After the winds had died down, the rain stopped and the floods dissipated this bridge was one of the only bridges to still be standing completely in tact. The engineers had accomplished a great feat. They had designed a structure that could take the worst that nature could dish out and still stand proud.

But the engineers, despite their ingenuity and brilliance, had not quite outsmarted Mother Nature. They had figured out to how to keep a bridge from tumbling, but they had not figured out how to keep the river from carving a new path. The bridge, which had for a few months allowed people to cross from one side of the river to the other side, now was a bridge that started nowhere and ended nowhere.

But, damn! It sure was a beautiful bridge!