7 Reasons Christians Travel
Discovery
On our first night aboard Holland America’s Rotterdam, on our first big cruise together, my 12-year old daughter and I were at the customer service desk in the beautifully decorated atrium. Standing at the counter, I heard a cricket chirping from the planter behind me. I asked the lady at the counter if the noise was a sound effect. She laughed a bit, apologized, and explained that somehow a cricket had gotten onboard and they hadn’t been able to find it. My daughter thought it was hilarious that I was such an idiot to have asked if it was a sound effect. I don’t really care for it when a yet-to-be teen is smarter than me, so I needed a come-back. When I was a kid I had been to Disneyland several times. In the Pirates of the Caribbean ride there are cricket sound effects. You hear them at the beginning of the ride and if you eat at the expensive restaurant located inside the ride. If an expensive restaurant would have cricket sound effects, why not a cruise ship? It makes sense to me. My daughter still thinks she’s smarter than me.
I grew up in a world where stories came to life at Disneyland, most of the world’s attractions have been recreated in Las Vegas, and reality television is on hundreds of channels. Problem being: Disney is fiction, Vegas is quarter sized and culturally void, and reality TV is anything but real. Bible stories are not fiction, but they come alive in the holy lands. Not only can you see the full sized, authentic version of the Eiffel Tower, Great Pyramid of Giza, and the New York skyline in Paris, Giza, and New York, but you can also experience the culture in those places. And by traveling yourself to a place, you get your own perspective and your own experience. You’re not getting the perspective of a director, or the experience of actors. There is no narrator, and no background music. Every time that I have traveled to a new place, the experience has been different than I expected. With the amount of materials available to us now to research destinations, it would seem that finding the unexpected would be rare, but this simply is not the case. Every journey involves discovery.
I grew up in a world where stories came to life at Disneyland, most of the world’s attractions have been recreated in Las Vegas, and reality television is on hundreds of channels. Problem being: Disney is fiction, Vegas is quarter sized and culturally void, and reality TV is anything but real. Bible stories are not fiction, but they come alive in the holy lands. Not only can you see the full sized, authentic version of the Eiffel Tower, Great Pyramid of Giza, and the New York skyline in Paris, Giza, and New York, but you can also experience the culture in those places. And by traveling yourself to a place, you get your own perspective and your own experience. You’re not getting the perspective of a director, or the experience of actors. There is no narrator, and no background music. Every time that I have traveled to a new place, the experience has been different than I expected. With the amount of materials available to us now to research destinations, it would seem that finding the unexpected would be rare, but this simply is not the case. Every journey involves discovery.