By Fr. Adolf Washington
Two brothers lived on two adjacent farms. They shared their resources to help each other in farming. After forty years of living peacefully, a serious misunderstanding and argument broke out between them.
The following day the younger brother brought in a bulldozer and dug up a huge trench between his farm and his elder brother’s farm so that he will not cross over.
As evening came, the elder brother heard a knock on his door. When he opened the door he found a man with a box in his hand. “I am a carpenter sir and I have my tools with me. Do you have any work for me?” The elder brother replied after thinking for a while, “Yes, I have some work for you”. Pointing to his younger brother’s farm and the huge trench, he said “I would like you to build a ten feet high fence between my farm and his. There is enough wood lying in my farm for you to use. While I return from the city I would like to see the work completed.”
When the elder brother returned from the city in the evening, he was shocked to see what the carpenter had done. He had built a beautiful bridge across the farms. Even before they could converse further he found his younger brother standing across the end of the bridge with arms outstretched as an act of reconciliation. The bridge had sent a message across.
He crossed over and the brothers reconciled. The elder brother impressed with the carpenter, asked him: “Can I offer you some more work?” The carpenter gently replied: “No sir. I have many more bridges to build,” and walked away.
Jesus’s disciple, Peter came up to Jesus and asked him: “Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him? up to seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times” (Mathew 18:21-22). Jesus taught how limitless our forgiveness must be because God’s forgiveness is limitless.
Saint Paul in his letter to the Colossians, urges them: “Bear with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgive as the Lord has forgiven you.”(Colossians:3:13). Saint Peter says: “Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing.” (I Peter 3:9).
These exhortations from the Scriptures urge us to be bridge-builders. People who forgive and reconcile, are bridge-builders. Are you a bridge-builder? Would you be like carpenter who said: “I have many more bridges to build?”