The Bridge Builder Who Ignored the Critics

In 1883, when the Brooklyn Bridge finally opened after fourteen years of construction, few remembered that its chief engineer, Washington Roebling, had been bedridden for most of the project. Paralyzed by decompression sickness, he directed construction from his apartment window with a telescope, relaying instructions through his wife Emily. Critics called the bridge a folly. Newspapers predicted collapse. City officials demanded Roebling be replaced. One alderman declared the whole enterprise "a monumental waste of public money."

Roebling never dignified the critics with debate. He simply kept building. He knew the mathematics were sound. He knew the cables would hold. And when thousands of people walked across that completed span on opening day — when P.T. Barnum paraded twenty-one elephants across it to prove its strength — the critics had nothing left to say.

When Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem mocked Nehemiah's ragged crew of builders, Nehemiah refused to argue engineering or politics. He pointed upward: "The God of heaven will give us success." He knew something his opponents could not grasp — that the Author of the blueprints was El Shaddai Himself, and servants working under divine commission need not petition mockers for approval. The work belonged to God. The workers belonged to God. And the outcome was already settled in heaven before a single stone was lifted in Jerusalem.