Some thoughts on God and traveling I found in my notebook while on the road, originally posted May 2, 2012.
It’s just this itching of discomfort that calls me by name–names me. The lusty trains of wanderloss have beckoned me to the loss of all that I know in homes and online. Here, there are no codes or formulas. Rather, there is a presence of lives guided only by emotion and desire–driven only by this madness to dwell in the state of passionate searching.
Have you found this plateau?
The peak is named travel and the ascent is called departure [from home].
In this, the season of motion, few things that can be gathered, accumulated, or touched are longed for. These pinings are replaced, rather, with a collection of memories; with a desire to be touched, to be beaten out of sleep for trespassing; and to be with people. With someone to accompany you on this sojourn–to hear your thoughts and to share theirs as you sit on the [surprisingly clean] stone floor of the bus terminal.
When I rid myself of the internet, of security, and of all I own, save a handful of backpack essentials, I gain the freedom of the open road and the liveliness that accompanies a commercial-free life.
Every girl becomes just that much more beautiful; every man that much more accommodating. The color in the sky and the cool wince of my skin under the rain is magnified exponentially. Ripples of a passing river offer comfort while before they would have been overlooked. And where in all of these glimpses of thriving life does God fit?
Everywhere.
Every raindrop to touch skin is an envelope of His love–a reminder that He hasn’t forgotten you. I may weary of manmade dramas and what the world tells me my life should look like, but I believe that to seek Him is to travel; to violently escape comfort and find a solace in omnipresent companionship. In this relationship, and in this relationship alone, I can share my thoughts with someone who never tires of hearing them; and I can seek His perfect wisdom any time a Bible can be found, or a prayer can be muttered. One of the beauties of His Word is that I can read it in Brasil and it is just as true and accessible as in Boston; in Nigeria as in North Carolina.
My advice to you, dear readers, is to get out and find this discomfort. Get out and discover the joy of full reliance on YHWH.
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