I had an opportunity to visit St George’s this week. I like going on little outings from time to time, having a change of scenery, walking and meeting other people.

After waiting at a red light and then crossing the Swing Bridge, which is under repair at the moment, I had to think of bridges. You actually need courage to build and afterwards to cross bridges, literally and figuratively speaking. Often it is fear that hinders us to go forward, to meet each other and visit those on the other side.

Bridges of the kind we need between us, are actually human bridges. They are built of people who choose not to insist on their point of view, but who are willing at times to leave their position in order to walk back and forth between the houses, between the groups, parties, and peoples, between cultures and power blocks.

Such a bridge is made of people who are on a journey.

The true meaning of bridges is peace and understanding. Peace is built by those who no longer just stand on their own shore and look over to the “evil enemy” on the other side, but put their feet on the water and trust that the bridge of confidence will carry them over.

Peace becomes reality when we are willing to come so close to each other that we can hear each other’s low voice and never separate so far that we cannot hear each other’s calling.

Bridges of this kind are built by the faith that where strangers live there are actually not aliens, but humans. And what could be more important in our endangered world than this faith. It requires a mindset that expects on the other side people who want peace themselves.

People who have families they love and who want them to grow and live in peace. When I visited the YMCA House in Chicago many years ago, I noticed a sign near the entrance: “There are no strangers here, just friends we haven’t met yet.” I really liked that sign, instantly.

But as simple as these thoughts might sound, they are everything but self-evident. One cannot command trust, one can only dare to trust. It takes being vulnerable.

So in order to create peace, people have to carefully lay the doubt and suspicion to the side and open up to the views of the other side, so that we will not talk about danger where there is no danger, will not talk about inevitability where there is choice, because it still depends on the word that one speaks, the encounter we have with each other. “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God,” Jesus said (Matthew 5:9, New International Version).

Peacemakers are on their journey with Christ of whom it is said that he broke down the fence and came over from God to us humans and from us back to God. He bridged the gap.

Jesus Christ is the great wanderer between worlds. He did not have a house, but his house was the road. And when we hear him say, “Follow me”, we will follow him from our home to the house of the neighbour, from our shore to the other shore, from our side to the other side bringing peace and God’s word of compassion.

The metaphor of the bridge tells us, that perpendicular to what ever separates us there can be a narrow way over the waters that can connect us. This narrow way can carry us. “I am the way,” Jesus says in the Gospel of John. He is not just the way that leads to the other person, he also is the way to God. Through him we have access to God’s kingdom.

One day each and every one of us will stand at the last shore, and we will need a bridge again, a bridge that will carry us across the water to the other side, where the risen Christ will welcome us. We will not carry anything with us to the other side, nothing we owned and nothing that was familiar, but we have to make our hearts free from all that, and trust again that the bridge will carry us when we put our foot on uncharted territory.

I guess when this day comes, it might be helpful if we have learnt to cross bridges before, if we have experience with trust and peace. Everything we do to serve peace is practice for that way. And all the confidence we have developed is the beginning of the trust and courage we will need for that last big bridge.

Last Sunday, the Cub Scouts and their families were at Centenary Church to celebrate. That was like a joyful and calm practice of what we need every day to move forward into the new week and the years ahead – on our way we walk together in this world, back and forth between people, houses and cultures and we practice what will finally be fulfilled: finding the peace that is higher than all understanding.

And even when we come to a shore where there is no bridge, the Bible tells us in Exodus about a people who crossed the sea, and in Joshua a river, by just finding the courage to put the feet forward, to walk right into the flood.

These were moments of confidence Isaiah later recalled for God’s people returning from exile in Babylon.

It is an image of a people standing at the shore and hearing God’s word, and this word I want to leave with you, with all of us, wherever you may come from and whatever shore you are standing at, a word of encouragement (Isaiah 43:1-2, New Revised Standard Version):

“But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burnt, and the flame shall not consume you.’”

• Karsten Decker is a German theologian with a double degree equivalent to an MTheol and MDiv. He studied in Marburg (Germany), Knoxville (USA), and Toronto (Canada) and comes from a united church of Lutheran and Reformed Churches. He was the pastor of Peace Lutheran Church in Bermuda from 2010 to 2017, and after returning from Germany is now the temporary pulpit supply at Centenary Untied Methodist Church in Smith’s