Travel:

Throughout my youth and well into my adult years, I had no great interest in traveling outside the U.S.  Because of being able to go on convention trips with my parents when I was growing up, I had seen a large part of the United States by the time I graduated from high school   I had been to Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago--visiting almost every state in the continental U.S. 

 

But about twenty years ago, it dawned on me that for a blind person, travel has a much larger purpose than it perhaps does for most sighted people.  I think the turning point came one night when Lydia, my parents and I were vacationing at the beach.  There was a minor tropical disturbance just off shore.  It posed no real danger to us; but it did stir up the water quite a bit and made for some interesting viewing.  My father was pointing out to me that the high tide was coming right up to the sea wall within a few feet of where we were staying.  That seemed almost impossible to me.  It wasn't that I didn't believe him.  It was rather that I just couldn't quite get the picture in my mind of what the water was actually doing.  Consequently, he took me down to the beach, in the wind and the rain, so I could actually feel what he was talking about.  It was just as he said; and then, I understood.  (I had something of the same experience, though on a much different scale of magnitude and emotion, when the World Trade Center came down on September 11, 2001.  I couldn't see it, of course; and I had never been in the World Trade Center.  It was a little overwhelming to try  to conceptualize exactly what was going on.)

 

I began to realize, at some point as I was approaching middle age, that other people can see the pictures of the Holy Land, Europe, Hawaii, the major cities of the world; and through those pictures they can get a fairly accurate idea of what the places and the people are like.  Of course, the pictures mean nothing to me unless somebody describes them.  Even then, I'm experiencing the pictures through somebody else's eyes, through their interpretation.

 

I realize that I'll never really know what the world is like unless I could visit more of it--hear the sounds, smell the smells, experience the places in all the ways that are still open to me.  Of course, I don't expect to be able to do that, though I have thought from time to time how interesting and exciting it would be actually to preach in various parts of the world and challenge people on many continents with the biblical truths of our reformed heritage and faith.

 

Of course, I would enjoy the excitement of a luxury liner, the thrill of travel on a jumbo jet, the extravagance of the cuisine on a cruise ship.  For me however, those would not be the principal reasons for wanting to travel globally.  It would simply be to gain a better understanding of this world and the people in it.  And then, perhaps through that added understanding, I would be better able to communicate the message of faith--not only here, but even in places far away.  I would live what I cannot see.