Category: Travel (Page 1 of 23)

These last few days I’ve been at a conference in Medellín, Columbia, for Cru staff serving in cities across South America and the Caribbean. Not too long ago, no sane person would have considered Medellín for a safe and peaceful gathering. Once considered the drug capital of the world, Medellín suffered years of extreme violence.

We heard from a local pastor of the redemptive story of Medellín. Christian believers banded together to pray on a hillside overlooking their city, starting with a group of four that eventually grew to thousands. Emboldened city leaders pushed to end the violence. Through many sacrifices and brave stands, crime subsided and the city began to heal.

This week where citizens once hurried indoors in the early evenings to avoid random shootings, we ate dinner at outdoor restaurants and strolled back to our hotel enjoying the night air.

Medellín sits in a valley ringed by beautiful mountains. As I reflect on the recent history of the city, Psalm 121 comes to mind:

I lift up my eyes to the hills—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

The Lord will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.

The good people of Medellín climbed the hills surrounding their town and begged God for help. The Lord answered and the city now prospers. Of course, not all crime has disappeared and Medellín still deals with problems, but the transformation is startling.

Which leads me to wonder, if the Lord can bring such change to the drug capital of the world, what work might he do in my life? Perhaps it’s time for me to look beyond the hills and pray to the Maker of heaven and earth.

Psalm 121 in reading the Bible in 2023

Photo of the hills of Medellín outside my hotel room

A few days ago I visited La Sagrada Familia, a vast cathedral in Barcelona, Spain. Designed by Anton Gaudí in the 1800’s, after 150 years the building is still under construction, slated for completion (maybe) this decade.

Gaudí, an unknown architect before taking over the Sagrada project, believed the works of God in nature best lead us to comprehend the action of God in our lives. Gaudí remarked, originality consists in returning to the origin.

Using themes from the natural world, Gaudí returned to the originator of all things again and again in his designs. He copied the swirls of shells in stairwells, the honeycomb patterns of bees in windows, and the branching trees of the forest in supports for ceilings. He lit up his cathedral with enormous walls of light, capturing the movement of the sun. 

No church or cathedral shines like La Sagrada Familia (and I’ve been in hundreds). Light pours in through both stained and clear glass all day long, the changing angles of the sun revealing new aspects of the interior—creating a light show put on by the Lord.

Which is what Gaudí intended. He hoped people would seek God as a result of this phantasmic building. Gaudí created a space where people might perceive the light of the Lord and the truth of the Scriptures.

A psalmist once prayed: Lord, send out your light and truth; let them lead me (Psalm 43:3). Gaudí’s designs encapsulate an answer to this prayer. In the Sagrada, and well as all around us, God’s light and truth shine.

For me this raises a couple of questions. Do I take time to notice God’s light and truth quietly animating the world around me, and when I do, will I follow where they lead?

Camino de Santiago 2023

Photo from La Sagrada Familia website

When you travel the world you discover helpful people.

A few days ago the manager who served breakfast at our hotel packed four of us an entire lunch—before the restaurant even opened—when all we asked for was a piece of fruit. Along with apples and bananas, he added sandwiches, muffins and bottled water.

While on a tour in a crowded marketplace in Morocco, an experienced local kept his eye on our group, fending off potential problems, including potholes and pickpockets.

Later that day, a gentleman selling trinkets on the street spotted our mis-parked bus and led us to the right location. He smiled and waved as he pointed the way.

The Scriptures tells us that one gives freely, yet grows all the richer…(Proverbs 11:24).

I don’t believe any of these men hold great wealth, but all three gave freely to me, a stranger, in some way this past week.

I can’t help but believe they’re are richer for it—I know I am.

Camino de Santiago 2023

Photo of our Moroccan minder keeping watch

My team trained into Romania as undercover missionaries. The strict communist government forbade contraband—Bibles in particular—from entering the country. But each team member took one anyway. I placed my Bible in the bottom of my sleeping bag, then rolled the bag up tight and stuck it down in my pack. We sat pensively as inspectors questioned us at the border. They poked around, but seeing no threat stamped our passports and sent us on.

My fellow college students and I represented no threat. But those hidden Bibles carried seeds of destruction for communist ideology. We gave each one to a different pastor we met in secretive mountain camps. I watched grown men weep when they held a complete Bible for the first time (they possessed only a few pages of a Bible, or handwritten copies of various passages).

I grasped the privilege of unfettered access to the scriptures. Entire governments committed vast resources to eradicating Bibles, while fervent believers endured great personal risk to get one. I’ve never taken a Bible for granted since.

Two thousand years previously, Paul reminded a young pastor that God’s word is not chained.

Communists tried to chain the scriptures throughout Eastern Europe because of the inherent danger to their authority found in the book. Give people free access to the Bible and God replaces the primacy of ideology or state or even self.

Don’t hinder the scriptures—unchain them.

On my shelf sits an embarrassment of riches—multiple Bibles in various translations and styles. I allow my own chains to bind, like busyness, or scrolling my phone, or my desire for entertainment, or laziness, or whispers from the enemy telling me to get to it later. I’m tempted to layer on chains.

But only when I unchain God’s word do I unchain the rest of my life, and that’s worth the risks it brings.

2 Timothy 2 in reading the Bible cover to cover in 2022

Photo by Thomas Kinto