I’m old enough to remember it happening.  On April 10, 1968, after a seemingly endless 5 year construction project, the so-called “New Bridge” on Interstate 10 over the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge was finally opened.  And there was much rejoicing.  Travelers seeking to cross, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “The Father of Waters”, were no longer forced to leave the Interstate and make their way several miles north to the old, narrow, scary “Huey Long” bridge, and then find their way back to Interstate 10 to continue their journey.  And, this new bridge was, in our minds, gigantic – 3 lanes going east and 3 lanes going west.  It almost seemed to us back then that you could cross this new bridge without even coming close to another vehicle.  Yes, the future of easy and rapid travel was finally here.  And it was going to be amazing!

Or so we thought back in those days of innocence, and unbridled enthusiasm, and confidence.  We were, after all, literally, on our way to The Moon!

But, the future didn’t quite turn out the way we hoped for “The New Bridge” [actually officially known as “The Horace Wilkinson Bridge”, something I did not know until today], as anyone who has attempted to cross it in the last several years can attest.  Instead, it has become one of the worst bottle-necks in the history of American Highways.  Every day, traffic backs up for miles in both directions because there is really only one lane to get onto the Bridge to cross the river going west, and there is only one lane to get off the bridge going east.  When the bridge was being designed back in the late 50’s/early 60’s, my guess is that everyone involved in the design believed that this would be more than adequate to handle both the traffic patterns of that day, and the traffic patterns that anyone could imagine developing in the future.  The nightmare bottle-neck that has now existed for many years at “The New Bridge” is the natural and expected result of what happens when people with little or no imagination are put in charge of imagining the future.

That last sentence is probably unnecessarily harsh, and might even be a completely incorrect assumption on my part, for which I hope you, and the bridge designers at the firm of Modjeski and Masters will forgive me.  On further reflection, it is entirely possible that these bridge designers were not bereft of imagination or of a vision for the future.  Perhaps it was not their vision of the future that was impaired, but simply the timing of that future. 

Certainly, the bridge entrances and exits, as designed, were more than adequate to handle both the volume of traffic when the bridge opened in 1968, and even an increased volume of traffic into the future.  But continued traffic growth had to have been anticipated, and these designers must have known that, at some point, the growing traffic would overwhelm their design UNLESS something fundamentally changed with how traffic moved in the future.  Therefore, it is possible that the designers of “The New Bridge” foresaw a future in which flying cars rendered this bridge, and its one-lane entrances and exits, completely obsolete before increased traffic resulted in major “bottle-necks” and crossings taking, at times, hours rather than minutes. 

Actually, that is a cool vision for the future, isn’t it? And why wouldn’t these designers have been thinking in such terms? America, with its “can do” attitude, had recently saved the world from tyranny in World War Two. The American Space Program was at that moment the envy of the world, bringing along with it countless new and exciting discoveries that were changing the way we lived. Nothing seemed impossible for “American Ingenuity”. Flying cars? Why not?

Unfortunately, we just aren’t there yet.  The bridge designers at Modjeski and Masters were visionaries who were simply ahead of their time – maybe a long way ahead of their time.  And maybe someday, that future will be here, and these bridge designers will have the last laugh.

Or, maybe they just blew it.  You decide.  Until the future of flying cars gets here, people using “The New Bridge” in Baton Rouge are actually stuck in the past – a past in which those one-lane entrances and exits seemed like a good idea.

Either way, if you’re going to be traveling east-bound or west-bound on Interstate 10 through Baton Rouge, you’d better take “The New Bridge” into consideration as you make your plans.  You really don’t want to be attempting to make that crossing if you’re running late, or if you’re hungry, or if you’re in need of a restroom break. 

Being stuck in the past happens to many of us.  We can’t get over a trauma, we can’t forget an insult, we can’t forgive a wrong, we can’t let go of “the way things have always been”.  And I know that none of these things are easy to move on from.  There is a danger, however, that we can become “comfortable” where we are - even if it’s painful, at least it’s familiar.  And so, we stay, in a dry and dusty place, and deprive ourselves of what else is out there.  We deprive ourselves of the future.  We deprive ourselves of God’s future.

God says: “Forget the things that have happened in the past… Behold!  I am about to do something new.  It is beginning to happen even now.  Do you not see it?  I will make a pathway through the wilderness.  I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”  Isaiah 43:18-19.

Isn’t that an amazing and wonderful promise?  Are our eyes open?  Do we not see the new future, the new things God is doing even now?  It’s time to start dreaming dreams and having visions of that future.  It’s time to get out of the past where we have been stuck for so long, and live the new future that God has planned for us.  Aren’t we ready for this?   

Ambrose Ramsey I Shepherd