Perched on the edge of the cliff lying on our fronts with a 150m drop beneath us, we watched the sun set over the ocean. With hundreds of miles of expansive waters in front of us, the crashing waves relentlessly pounding the rocks beneath us and the last glint of light flickering off the edge of the waves as they rolled in, it was obvious why photographers call this ‘golden hour’. Everything just seemed rosy. For a moment, in the simultaneous tranquillity and wild of what lay before us, everything else in life was on pause.
The bliss was temporarily interrupted by a quiet voice beside me whispering, trying not to spoil the moment: ‘I guess this is one of those moments where I want to thank someone. I guess you would … y’know … thank God? I’ve never believed, but I see how there might be something more, from moments like this.’
Beside me were a small number of international students, from all corners of the globe, here to study in Wales and to try and find the impossible balance between seeing Europe in one semester whilst getting to know local people and local culture! Clifftop moments like these made me want to speak of a transcendent power woven into the fabric of the universe, creating a depth to this world that few explore.
I am an outdoors person, a trail runner, who is my most joyful self when I’m watching those sunsets, up Alpine mountain peaks, or wild-camping looking up at the Northern Lights dancing in the arctic sky above me. It’s taken me a while to find that same feeling from city breaks; the ecstasy of the final chorus of a musical masterpiece that stays with you for months afterwards, or the depth of impact on my life when I’ve stopped to engage with local people living in very different realities on my trips. Regardless of where you experience those cliff-top moments, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.
Chasing the moment
With ageing parents and a nine month old child, chasing those moments, the transcendent ones, looks very different. Sometimes the ideal travel moments in life seem as elusive as finding a place as Instagram showed me it would be. That doesn’t stop my heart dreaming, helped along by low international air fares, the internet and often individualism!
Even if it’s simply for our annual leave once a year to somewhere more local, my heart is often sparked by my wandering mind thinking about my next travels. From the months researching, watching Instagram reels and pondering where to go, through to the actual build-up and getting ready, before, of course, the magic of the journey itself. Then the months, if not years, of memories formed and stored away in treasure pots for later when the days are darker or an opportunity for a story arises. Life can so easily be shaped by these dreams.
Why do our hearts get so much from travel?
My secular friends would tell me that the moments so many often chase in travel are simply illusions of transcendence, projected from our material brain. Pretend to be thankful if it helps you, but know that no-one is listening.
Most of my other more religious friends of various persuasions are quite happy to claim those transcendent moments for their own cause. Some pilgrimaging to try to earn themselves a place in an immaterial world to come. Some, less confident with truth claims, persuading us that we can’t really know much about this transcendent power. Others, of more eastern persuasions, using these moments to point us to the fact that we should be aiming for escape from the material pleasures of this world.
For me, I’m not convinced that any of that could explain what inspires me to travel or holds me back from selfish travel that harms the world around me but I realise that like everything in life, I tend to have pretty mixed motives for travel. Two things majorly tug on my heart which you can judge whether they are common to you too.
‘In the beginning…’
I wonder whether you’ve ever noticed what the first command from God to humans is, after he made us, according to the Bible?
Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground (Gen. 1:28).
Two things are clear here. Firstly humans are going to have to travel the globe – that’s what we’re made to do. They can’t fulfil the first ever command of God to fill the earth unless they do exactly that. Secondly from this verse, we do get some limitations on our travels. We are to do everything within the context of looking after the environment and fellow creatures that God has made alongside us. As the Bible goes on, it is made clear that ‘ruling’ and ‘subduing’ are not to destroy the habitat or misuse others, but to care for and tend to everything around us. The Maker of Travel has commanded us to go, enjoy the world, but to do so with care, for bigger purposes.
If this grand narrative about life is true, it would certainly explain why our hearts seem hard-wired to explore and be curious about the world around us but why we all know deep within, that it isn’t an invitation to trample on those we meet, or destroy everything as we go.
An invitation
Even if you aren’t sure about all this talk of ‘origins’, let me invite you to join me on one journey together. The Maker of Travel desires to know you and invite you to a New Heavens and New Earth, perfectly remade even better than before, for us to eternally enjoy exploring, with him at the centre of it.
Such offers all seem a bit like a fairy-tale, I admit, but just in case you’re even close to thinking it sounds like your cup of tea, then I’ll point you in the direction of an eyewitness account of Jesus’ life to read more evidence about those claims above. In John’s account of Jesus’ life he tells us his purpose about writing down a carefully crafted account (and his bias too):
These things are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life in his name (John 20:31).
Life
As John continues, he tells us more of that life through pictures, stories and direct explanations. He describes the life as joy, like a wedding feast where Jesus provides much wine after they had run out (John 2). He shares how Jesus has always existed as the life-giver (John 8:53), which didn’t go down well with the religious people at the time, who fully knew what Jesus was claiming and went to kill him. Jesus wants us to have life to the full through Jesus, the life-giver (John 10:10). Life not just for the here and now, but for a physical, resurrected new world:
I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this? (John 11:25-26).
For me, travelling makes me feel alive. Travelling alongside the Maker of Travel makes me feel even more alive, as we live in the shadow of the world to come. If you’re willing to explore this summer and to use your travel to go on a journey of a different sort, like countless others in the global Christian Travelers’ Network, you might just find yourself on an unexpected path which will leave you yearning for what you were made for.