Building bridges

By Jeff Becraft

Back when Caroline Children’s Home was still open. I would go over on Sunday afternoons and do some activities with the kids. One Sunday afternoon, I set up two tables. On table number one, I dumped a pile of Legos; and then I went over to table number two and dumped another pile of Legos on top of that. After breaking up the youth into two teams, I then gave them these instructions: “You have three minutes. You need to work together as a team… and you are going to build a wall. And when the three minutes are up, then we’ll all step back from the tables and we’ll vote who has the best wall.”

And then I turned them loose.

After that section of the exercise was over, I then instructed them: “All right… take apart all the walls so you again have a pile of Legos on your table.” When they had done that, I then followed up with: “Again, you have three minutes. You need to work together as a team… but this time you need to build a bridge with the Legos. When the three minutes are up, we’ll all step back and we’ll vote who has the best bridge.”

When all was said and done, I finally shared with them: “You see, with the exact same material, we can either build walls… or we can build bridges.”

And that choice is up to each one of us as well.

So I hope as we go into 2026, we will choose to build bridges.

There are things from 2025 (or even before that) maybe we need to let go of. Perhaps we have built walls up of bitterness and resentment towards others, and we are still harboring that. Perhaps we have built up walls around our hearts and around our lives.

This would be a good time to take down those walls and instead spend our emotion and effort on building bridges to other people. That, indeed, would be a happy new year.

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope located in Columbia, South Carolina, where people find encouragement to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. Jeff has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. If you would like Jeff to speak to your group or event, you can connect with him at  [email protected].