Slovenia Bound

Staring over a 75 foot cliff, holding my two year old son in my arms, I still remember his words to me. “Me do that!”  There was no fear, only eager anticipation to participate in the new adventure before him.  Eight years later things are no different.  Now Elijah is ten and he is still saying, “Me do that!”  The only thing that has changed as he has grown older is that the level of adventure seems to grow with him.  I asked Elijah what he would like to do for his ten year old daddy adventure.  He had finished his Lamplighter Challenge and now it was time to plan our trip.  He told me that he would like a trip filled with adventure, so we started looking at canyons all over the world.  We found a picture of Mala Koritnica and it took our breath away.  The canyon was located in the Slovenian Alps and it was so beautiful.  We had to learn more, so searching online we found a local canyon guide (Ziga Humar) to learn more about his land.  Ziga was great and gave us some valuable insight and canyon recommendations, which we planned a trip around.  The outcome is today we are en-route to Slovenia and an adventure with the Lord.

He is definitely with us, as we got to experience His hand in our first connecting flight in Chicago, where we had to change airlines. What I thought was an hour between flights was really only fifteen minutes.  To make things more fun, the airline we started flying with could not give us a boarding pass for the connecting airline, so we really did not have much information when we landed.  Upon landing we went to the nearest gate agent and they pointed us to a gate on the other end of the terminal.  We hurriedly made our way to that gate, not knowing if it was for our flight or just the correct airline so we could get a boarding pass printed.  When we got there, the gate agent welcomed us and handed us the tickets she had just printed out for us (before we got there).  We had three minutes to spare to grab a sandwich to take on the plane and then boarded.  On the plane we found they had moved us up to business class.  So, we have been enjoying a very pleasant and pampered flight over to Munich.

Our prayer for this trip has been that the Lord would open our eyes in the adventure, just like He did for Elisha’s servant (II Kings 6:17-20), so that we would be able to see the Lord moving and give him all the glory.  Adventure is not the goal though, only the vehicle our family uses to create relational depth and life transformation.  Through the opportunities and tribulations He provides, we are praying that we are forever changed, to the point that the Lord’s after glow will remain a part of us.  

The other thing the Lord put on my heart is Jeremiah 35:19 as He has been reminding me again about the Rechabites.  Because the Rechabites obeyed the voice of their father Jonadab in all the things he commanded of them, their reward is that a Rechabite will stand in the presence of the Lord forever!  May we all learn to first hear and then obey the voice of our Father.  Now it is time to practice!