Some of you do it all the time. I don’t know whether to offer congratulations or condolences.

Becky is spending the week in Memphis helping our youngest daughter celebrate her birthday.  It has been a wonderful week for mom and daughter. But the flight to Memphis meant an early Monday morning trip to the airport for us. In deciding when to leave, we had to factor the I-95 component into the equation. We left earlier than we might have and made the trip in 45 minutes or so. By the time I was heading home in the north bound lanes after dropping Becky off, I was glad we had made the decision to leave early. Southbound traffic had become a bit thick.

Becky had plenty of time to enjoy the Starbucks near Gate B-14.

I drive 1-95 from Langhorne to City Center or beyond several times a year. It’s never fun. Some of you do it all the time. Several times a week. Maybe every day. I don’t know whether to offer congratulations – you’ve proven yourself to be a person of extraordinary patience, or condolences – you do this every day?

Whether it’s an urban interstate or the bridge on Maple Avenue, we all know that the engineering marvels of the last century are rusting and crumbling and pretty much falling apart.

Infrastructure is a word that was made up in the last century to describe the engineering marvels built to connect our world.  The wordsmiths combined two old Latin words, infra- which means under, and structure which means building or “that which is put together,” and came up with “infrastructure” to describe all those underneath things that connect our world: highways and railroads, water pipes and telephone lines, bridges and tunnels.

Now our infrastructure is rusting and crumbling and pretty much falling apart.

For Christians, knowing and using Bible is a marvelous underneath thing that allows us to connect our world and our lives in the ways that God would have them connected. The words of Scripture are the conduit through which the Spirit flows, speaking into our hearts and minds. The teaching of the prophets and apostles bridges the divide between the hard and painful places in which we find ourselves and the lofty and good places to which God calls us. The stories of Jesus told in the gospels allow the living Savior to come from two millennia away and make himself known to us today.

Like the infrastructure of roads, bridges, tunnels, water pipes, and power lines, our knowledge and use of the Bible can rust and crumble. Like the painters on the Golden Gate Bridge who are never done applying paint to protect the span from the ocean air, the Christian is never done applying biblical truth to his or her life.

So how do we build or rebuild the spiritual infrastructure of our lives? Worship and service, prayer and devotions, and, especially, keeping that marvelous underneath thing, our knowledge and use of the Bible, from rusting and crumbling under the weight of our busy lives.

I know, there are a precious few weeks left in the summer.  But as you begin to read and hear the announcements about new Bible studies and groups, think about the need to be always rebuilding your spiritual infrastructure.

I will be heading to the airport this evening to meet Becky as she flies back from Memphis. I probably won’t enjoy the drive down I-95, but I will be reminded of the hard work it takes to rebuild that which was allowed to rust and crumble and pretty much fall apart. It’s sometime inconvenient, an unexpected delay, but the time spent keeping my spiritual infrastructure working well is always worth it.