The Bridge Builder of Mostar

In 1993, shelling destroyed the Stari Most, a sixteenth-century Ottoman bridge arching over the Neretva River in Mostar, Bosnia. The bridge had connected the city's Croatian west side and Bosnian east side for over four hundred years. When it collapsed, so did any remaining pretense of unity. Neighbors became enemies. The river became a wall.

After the war ended, a small team of engineers and stonemasons began the painstaking work of rebuilding. They pulled original stones from the riverbed, one by one. They studied old photographs and Ottoman construction records. They did not rush. They did not grandstand. For nearly a decade, they carved and fitted and tested — not with bulldozers and cranes, but largely by hand, honoring the ancient methods.

When the restored bridge opened in 2004, people from both sides walked across it and wept. No army had forced reconciliation. No politician had brokered it. A quiet, faithful act of restoration — stone upon stone — had reopened what violence had closed.

Isaiah tells us that God's Chosen Servant brings justice not by shouting in the streets or crushing what is broken, but by tending to it. He does not snap the bruised reed. He does not blow out the flickering wick. He rebuilds. He restores. And He does not stop until justice reaches every fractured place on earth.