photo #9400550

"A Tiny, Hidden Flaw""A small leak can sink a great ship. A small spark can kindle a great fire. A little sin can ruin an immortal soul.” The Silver Bridge, known for its silver aluminum paint, opened on May 30, 1928, to great fanfare. It featured a groundbreaking cantilever design, and, eager to be a part of history, 10,000 people crossed the bridge that day. Thirty-nine years later the bridge collapsed, resulting in the loss of 46 lives.Typically suspension bridges use woven-wire cables. The Silver Bridge was suspended from heat-treated steel eyebar chains resembling elongated links of a bicycle chain. Investigators eventually discovered that a single eyebar developed a crack, a slow corrosive fissure they called it, barely a quarter of an inch long. Once formed, however, all it could do was grow until it failed, bringing down the entire structure.Isn’t that what happened in the Garden of Eden? Don’t you think over time as Eve pondered the forbidden tree and the delights it offered that eventually she ventured to take one small fruit, hoping no one would notice—plunging the entire human race into sin.And doesn’t the same thing happen to Christians? One small flaw, a tiny yielding to temptation, that over time causes major failure; a life ruined, a marriage broken, a family shattered, a church destroyed, a ministry reduced to rubble.“If only I had said no to that long-ago temptation…”