Finding the Other Side....

Wanda was completing a charity walk to find the cure for breast cancer.  She apparently saw an easy way across to the other side.  Crossing the bridge--it suddenly went into operation, with the automatic control switching on.  Up went the bridge, and up went Wanda!  She suspended 22 ft up for 30 mins before being rescued.  Why did she choose to get to the other side this way?  Sounds like that old joke about why did the chicken cross over to the other side of the road!  No joking matter because a young man named Kyle did exactly the same thing--fall to his death.

The point is not her ignorance--or "forgive us our trespasses" for which she may be cited--but that common desire in all of us to get to the other side.  It's more than a bridge--it is the feeling that we are on a journey and are traveling somewhere...passing over.  Certainly the Tennyson poem "crossing the bar" speaks to the heart of it.  Stonewall Jackson talked of going over to the other side as he lay dying. 

In the Christian faith, we celebrate in worship by breaking the host wafer and saying---
Alleluia, Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.  Therefore let us keep the feast, Alleluia!

Our pass-over to the other side is Jesus Christ.
The pass-over out of storm to calm,
from fear to faith,
from crisis to resolution,
from anxiety to peace....

The pass-over from this life to the next.... Amen+