We are back home now, and everything was as I expected.

Our cat, Cyrus the Great, met us at the door, 600+ emails met me in my inbox, and my younger associates and partners met me at the office with updates, questions, and requests for guidance. 

It was business as usual.

A new view of the mundane

But something felt different. 

There is something about studying the lives of people like Eulalia, Victor of Marseille, Christopher Columbus, Cyprian, and the Knights of Malta that makes you realize how the mundane can become important in God’s grand scheme.

Columbus thought he was called to discover a route to the West Indies. Even after he had fulfilled his calling, he didn’t fully understand the magnitude of what he had discovered. He didn’t know that just 90 miles to the north was the North American Continent, that it would spawn the most powerful nation in the world and a perpetual source of missionaries to the rest of the world. But God knew.

Same thing with the Knights of Malta. They thought they were fighting to hold a fort and a small island, but in reality their sacrifice helped secure Western Europe for Christianity for 500 years.

I’ve been handling the same types of legal matters for years, and after doing it for so long, it’s easier to be dispassionate about each matter. That’s generally a good thing. It keeps my judgment sharp. 

What can get lost in that is the recognition that any one matter could have an effect in my clients’ lives, the business world, or the Kingdom, that dwarfs its initial impression.

I’ve always tried to do my work excellently and to the glory of God. Now I want to add to that the recognition—the possibility—that the work I do for every client may be far more important than it appears on the surface. It might change a person’s life or a business’s future, or turn the law in a better direction. 

Remembering Victor and Paul

The other thing that is different is that I keep thinking about Victor preaching the gospel to the three Roman soldiers in prison and Paul preaching in Malta “as he went along.” The cost we are asked to pay—rejection, embarrassment, loss of a relationship—is no comparison to the cost Eulalia, Victor, Cyprian, and Paul paid. They sacrificed their lives; we only need to be willing to sacrifice some pride. 

So, when I got back, I invited a friend, who I know has been searching for God for a while, to church. He accepted and enjoyed it and told me he wanted to talk more. I plan to do more of that.

And that is part of why we do these travel devotionals. We study the lives of Christians who have changed the world. We visit the places that shaped them. We see what kind of fruit a life firmly planted in the soil of the kingdom can yield, and it makes us want to do the same.

That’s why I’m confident we will continue to travel.

Until our next journey. GS