I attended both undergraduate and graduate school in Charleston, SC in the 1990’s. At that time, if you wanted to get from downtown Charleston to Mount Pleasant (or vice versa), you had to cross either the Grace or Silas Pearman bridges. These two bridges were constructed in 1929 and 1966, respectively, and stood until 2005 when they were both replaced by a modern, state of the art bridge known as the Ravenel bridge.
I crossed those old bridges many times, most by vehicle but also several times as part of the Cooper River Bridge Run. In the late 1990’s, I purchased a print by a well-known artist (Jim Booth) that depicted a foggy scene at night of the two old bridges. I also had a picture of the old bridges by him in daylight. He published the “foggy” version shortly after the announcement the two old bridges would be replaced, the fog representing the symbolism of the past fading away.
The interesting thing about bridges is they are “connectors”, in the truest sense connecting two pieces of land together by typically passing over water. But more than linking land, they often link two cultures and ways of life. Life in downtown Charleston and the rhythm of the day is very different than life in Mount Pleasant and the rhythm of that culture. Both good, but still different. Both with history of successes and failures.
If you stop and think about it, we (as humans) are also connectors. Every day, in every conversation and in every interaction, we are connecting ideas, people, concepts together. All too often we do this without thinking or without any intentional purpose. Yet, each of us plays a vital role in linking people, ideas, and purpose together to create something greater than ourselves.
Connecting Our Past to Our Future
Recently, I’ve been focusing on this concept of bridging the past to the future. This concept has showed up in many forms and ways in my life and in various “segments” of my life. Whether in my career/vocation/skills, my family relationships, my personal relationships, my walk with God (faith), or other factors, I’ve been ruminating a lot about how to connect past experiences to help shape and influence the future. Let me give you an example to help illustrate I was raised in South Carolina (the greatest state in my opinion!) and I was raised in a small southern Baptist church. I recently attended my home church with my mom for Homecoming, a tradition in many southern Baptist churches. And like most churches, I feasted on many casseroles, family recipes and deserts that would feed a small village. I don’t attend that church anymore but the legacy it has in helping foster and encourage my faith is so vital. My present church is larger and not as traditional as that church, but both still preach the gospel and are grounded in God’s word. Those two traits CONNECT my past and present and lead me into the future. They help shape my faith, beliefs, values today and will for the future.
In reviewing my family tree, I found for example that I had a distant relative on my mother’s side that helped found one of the oldest churches in South Carolina, Red Bank Baptist Church. He had a vision, and he’d be proud to know that my mother’s lineage carried that faith forward in starting the first deaf ministry at First Baptist Church in Sumter, SC – focused on ministering to the hearing impaired in the mid 1900’s when many hearing-impaired were considered outcasts.
The Past as a Compass
Our past is just that…the past. We get to choose whether we bring it along in the present moment. In some cases, bringing elements (like my faith example above) into our present is healthy. In other cases, there may be parts of our past we leave behind. We get to choose! And our past does serve as a “living guide” for us to either accept, correct/amend, or disregard all together.
I’m in a place of thinking a lot lately and in a great ongoing conversation with a good friend and trusted brother in Christ about “multi-generational family planning”. I think we get to help shape our future, not control it and not guarantee it, but influence and shape it. If we don’t have intentions about shaping it or nurturing it, we leave it to chance. And we are all connectors from our past to our future. How we invest in relationships, how we spend our time, how we care for others and our family, how we behave, how we show grace are all helping influence our future. This might seem a little weird or “out there” for some, but I believe for many years I didn’t live with any REAL, MEANINGFUL future in mind. I lived like most… a future defined by worldly success, retirement, possessions, and the next project to tackle etc. And none of that is bad in itself but it needs to be put in context with a future “state” and not just a list of things to do.
I have no idea what the future holds and as a famous lyric from a Christian song says, “I do know WHO holds the future”. I’m on a journey to create something in my family that hopefully helps shape the future legacy of many generations to come. The Bible is full of stories in the Old Testament where God spoke to Abraham, Moses, and many others and made promises to them about future generations. In most cases, Abraham and Moses were faithful and, in many cases, they were not around to see those promises fulfilled. We live in a world shaped by the “here and now” but what if we shifted our vision to the “then and there” of shaping a family legacy.
Connecting The Past to Help Shape the Future: Worthy, Wise, and Wealth-Giving
I hope you can see that connecting the past to your future through recognition of the past and bringing along those elements of the past that are worthy, is not only wise, but creates wealth and prosperity for your future and more importantly, for those you “shepherd” in your family. I have no idea what my future holds or what the future of my family holds and I am not naïve enough to think it may not have some hard times or maybe even some “ugly” times but I do believe that I get to be a player in helping shape it and hopefully foster and nurture a multi-generational legacy that is beyond that which I can even dream. I want to do my part in that capacity while also trusting God to use my investment to create something even bigger and better….much like the connection that now exists between the Grace and Silas Pearlman bridges to the Ravenel bridge. It has connected two parcels of land and people together in a manner that has helped shape the prosperity, culture, and legacy of Charleston, South Carolina.
*Footnote: If you are interested in more details about the history of the Charleston bridges, you can find more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooper_River_Bridges_(1929%E2%80%932005)
