The Rt Rev Dr Derek Browning urges readers to build bridges to connect with others

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A New Year is a bridge into the future that is rooted in the past and spans the present.

Bridges, great or small, contemporary or ancient, are about connecting. Bridges overcome barriers. Bridges bring people together. Bridges honour the land by forging links of steel and stone and wood and allow us to communicate and share.

Bridges span divides, rooted in the earth, but reaching out and up to the sky before coming down again.

In September last year I was privileged to bless the new Queensferry Crossing, which is a thing of great beauty, but it also speaks of things beyond steel and stone and wood. The image of the bridge, the metaphor for the dynamic of Christian faith, is one that has stayed with me.

Bridges are about movement and purpose and service. Bridges have distinctive functions, and so does our Christian faith. Bridges connect places and peoples, and so must our Christian faith.

At the start of a New Year, we have the opportunity to allow our faith to be a bridge of possibility, enabling people to overcome the chasms of darkness, fear, loneliness, persecution and prejudice.

We have the opportunity to be the connection, and to live our faith out loud as we reach out to the individuals and to communities around us.

I was struck by the story of Queensferry Parish Church whose members carried out 320 acts of kindness to mark the official opening of the new crossing. People kept a record of what they had done on post-it notes attached to an impressive nine foot drawing of the new bridge, which they have called the Bridge of Kindness. For the people of that parish, and surely for the people of every parish, being authentic Christians today meant doing something about the constant need to build bridges with the surrounding community.

I like that.

When we build bridges with our faith we find ways to address the pressure points where people are struggling to live: in times of loneliness, or frailty, or ill-health, or bereavement, or anger, or bewilderment. We might not be able to fix every situation, but we might be able to do something to make things bearable.

In this New Year we might be one of the different strands linking together a bridge of kindness and faith, reaching out, connecting, including, and helping others on the road of life.

In a world where people are isolated, we don’t build walls, we build bridges; we don’t shut out, we welcome in.

In our communities, country and world, in all our diversity, Christianity calls us to be part of a bridge. Reaching up to God, and reaching out to our neighbours.

Travelling across our country and our world, it has been both humbling and impressive to see how many congregations, and the individuals who make them up, are doing just this.

In Kilmarnock I saw people with poor mental health reaching out to each other through art-work.

In Sweden I saw a congregation reaching out to refugees from across the world. In Anstruther I saw a community reaching out through a Foodbank.

In Glasgow I saw people reaching out through building resilience amongst women. With people from North and South Korea I saw believers reach out over deep divides.

In Edinburgh I saw people reaching out over post-natal depression.

So many bridges of kindness and faith.

I have no strong views on resolutions at New Year, but it might be that if each one of us chose one way to be a bridge, to another person, to another community, to another situation, what might our inter-connected faith in action achieve?

To each and every one of you I wish God’s richest blessing in this New Year. Be a bridge; reach out.

The Rt Rev Dr Derek Browning is Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 2017/18.