Send Up The Kite

We live in a time of chasms.

They are everywhere—political, cultural, racial, economic, spiritual. They run between neighbors, families, churches, and even within the body of Christ itself. Increasingly, we encounter one another not as fellow travelers but as strangers standing on opposite sides of widening divides.

Most of us know the feeling intimately. We look at someone, perhaps a friend, a brother or sister in Christian fellowship, or even someone who has hurt or betrayed us, and quietly conclude: The distance between us is too great. Sometimes we say it out loud. More often, we simply feel it. They’re entrenched. I’m convinced I’m right. There’s no way across this.

This isn’t new to human experience. What is new is how universal the resignation has become. Everywhere we look, everyone seems to be saying the same thing: The chasm is uncrossable.

So what do we do with that? Do we agree to disagree and walk away? Do we allow the lines that divide us to keep hardening until each of us stands isolated on our own lonely island of certainty—surrounded by gaps no one dares to cross?

I don’t think that’s what we’re called to.

A Distinct People—and a Dangerous Temptation

Christians often speak, rightly, of the call to being a distinct people. Scripture calls us a “chosen generation… a holy nation… a peculiar people.” We are not meant to be shaped by the world’s values or absorbed into its patterns. There is something precious and necessary, about that distinction.

But distinction carries a danger.

If we’re not careful, what God intends as light can become an impassable wall. What is meant to mark us as belonging to Jesus can quietly mark us as unreachable.

Many people look at committed Christian communities and admire what they see. They recognize something beautiful, something ordered, something full of meaning. And yet their internal response often sounds like this: I could never be one of those people. They’re so different. They claim a special relationship with God. That kind of life isn’t for someone like me.

It’s the same way people sometimes look at monks or nuns—figures of devotion admired from a distance but assumed to belong to a category entirely separate from “normal” people.

The truth, of course, is far simpler and far more humbling: we are not special in ourselves. We are not stronger, better, or more disciplined. We are simply people who have been met by grace and changed by love into something we never thought we could be.

Which raises a pressing question for our moment: How do we reach those who believe the life of faith is beautiful—but impossible for them?

A Ministry of Reconciliation

The apostle Paul writes that God “has given to us the ministry of reconciliation.” That phrase is often read narrowly, as though it refers only to bringing individuals into right relationship with God. But reconciliation is never abstract. It is lived out in real relationships, real tensions, real fractures between people.

Jesus called peacemakers the children of God. Paul urged believers to “endeavor to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” and, as far as it depends on us, to live peaceably with all.

In other words, the calling is not merely to hold truth, but to carry it across distance. To do the hard, humble work of closing gaps rather than explaining why they cannot be closed.

Which brings me to a story that has stayed with me for years.

How a Bridge Begins

In the 1840s, two nations were separated by a great and turbulent gorge at Niagara Falls. The river was nearly eight hundred feet across—too wide to row, too wild to cross by conventional means. Yet there was a vision to build a bridge.

The question was simple: How do you get the first line across?

An engineer named Charles Ellet Jr. proposed an unusual solution. Rather than attempting something massive and immediate, he offered a small challenge: whoever could get the first thread across the gorge would win.

A young boy named Homan Walsh took up the challenge by flying a kite.

Carried by the wind, the kite crossed the chasm, trailing behind it a single fragile string. That string was then used to pull a stronger line. The stronger line pulled a rope. The rope pulled a wire. The wire pulled a cable. And eventually, cables strong enough to support a bridge capable of carrying trains stretched across what had once been impossible.

The bridge did not begin with steel.

It began with a thread.

The Courage to Send Up a Kite

I often return to that image when I think about our current moment.

Who among us is willing to send up the first kite?

Not a concession of truth. Not a surrender of conviction. But a surrender of self—of pride, fear, and the need to be proven right before being willing to love.

It’s tempting to assume that reaching across a divide means giving something up that we cannot afford to lose. But more often than not, what’s required is far simpler and far harder: humility. A willingness to begin small. A readiness to trust that the wind of grace may carry what we cannot.

Common ground does exist. Sometimes it’s our shared humanity. Sometimes it’s our love for our children. Sometimes it’s something as simple and unadorned as the old confession many of us learned as children: Jesus loves me, this I know.

A thread is enough—if someone is willing to send it.

There’s an old song by Phillips, Craig & Dean that captures this spirit beautifully: “Let’s build a bridge of love together.” It’s a simple line, but it carries profound truth. Bridges are not built by shouting across rivers. They are built by reaching, by risking, by trusting that someone on the other side might be willing to grab hold.

A Question Worth Pondering

So here is the challenge I find myself returning to again and again:

Who will you cross the chasm for?

Who will you reach toward in this next season?

Who will you carry the grace you’ve received across to?

Who might be waiting—not for a perfect argument, but for the first thread of love strong enough to begin something new?

Every bridge begins the same way: with one step, one gesture, one fragile line sent into the unknown.

Perhaps it’s time, once again, to send up the kite—and trust the wind of The Spirit of Grace to do the rest.