“ A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

In our Christian walk, we go through different seasons. There are seasons where we are experiencing the good times: blessings one after another. During these times, we sing the songs of Zion with joy. Then there are seasons where it feels like we are going through a drought and famine. This is when the test and trials comes. The enemy tries also to steal our joy and song. Where do we get the strength to handle all the pressures of life? How do we navigate through life’s rocky paths in a fleshly tabernacle? We will experience tough times along the way.

God has thoughts of peace for us. Before the beginning of time, God was still king. God created the heavens and earth. God says we are more important than the birds of the air and the fish of the sea. How do we get a testimony when we go through a trial by fire, how do we keep our sanity in a depressed state?

To get from point A to Point B in our Christian walk, we have to go through troubled waters. In these waters, there are alligators, crocodiles, and piranhas that will take you under. It does not matter what your status is in society and how smart you are, you cannot travel from point A to point B on your own strength.

Spring 1969: Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were both – assassinated. Racial tensions were erupting across the US. The war was raging in Vietnam. And Richard Nixon was in the White House.

Often our patience is a bridge for others. In the 1960 era hit song by the folk duo Simon and Garfunkel they vocalize the theme that says, "Like a bridge over troubled waters I will lay me down" Few people realize that this is borrowed from an old southern Negro spiritual from well over a hundred years ago. There was a story that was told about in a little café in New Orleans sung by an old black man with a ragged guitar Long before Simon and Garfunkel sung it. The song goes on by saying, "When you’re weary, feeling down. When trouble is all around . . .I will comfort you." " I ’m on your side when things get bad. . . when friends just can’t be found; like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down." Pretty much the promise of God found in the words of this old spiritual reworked into a folk song. But what about "In your patience possess your soul", This warning by Christ in troubled times?

What was a sensitive singer-songwriter like Paul Simon to do but dig deep for some words of solace? As he gazed out across the East River from the window of his New York apartment, he sang the opening lines he’d had for over a week. ‘When you’re weary/Feeling small/When tears are in your eyes/I will dry them all.’ He especially liked how the melody to the second couplet echoed one of his favourite Bach chorales.

After that promising start, however, there was only the sound of silence.

“I was stuck for a while,” Simon admits. “Everywhere I went led to somewhere I didn’t want to be.”

What ultimately inspired him to finish his “humble little gospel song” was an album by southern gospel group the Swan Silvertones: “Every time Simon came home, he would put that same record on, so it was in my mind. Simon goes on to says that he started to go to gospel chord changes, and took the melody further. Then there was one song where the lead singer was scatting, and he shouted out: ‘I’ll be your bridge over deep water/If you trust in my name.’ And, well, SImon goes on to say that he guess he stole it.” Simon couldn’t wait to play his new song for Art Garfunkel. With its sweeping melody and sustained high notes, it would be perfect for his partner’s choirboy-pure voice. Or so he thought.

On my theme picture for my new book , my sister has my face in the background looking over a bridge over a great deep valley tree scenery. I have being over some bridges of trouble water but I haven’t burned the bridges. I was taught that don't burn the bridges that brought you over.

A "bridge." It could be an enormous steel and concrete structure spanning a vast river complex or simply two ropes strung together over a stream in a rain forest, but in either case it was still a bridge. Even to civilians the bridge is of strategic importance as I hear encouraging motorists to take the toll bridge to work every morning . A new bridge in ada taylor took 5 years to build. As I watched the architecture build this bridge in Ada Taylor which took them 5 years. I began to realize that bridges take years to build and only a few moments to destroy.