What type of traveler are you? Are you the type who prefers to travel alone? Or are you the type who prefers to have the company of friends?
Traveling alone has its advantages:
1. When traveling alone, you are free to explore a place in any way you wish! No one would contradict you or tell you to do something you don’t really want to do.
2. Traveling alone increases your courage. As you have no one to rely on to but yourself, you learn to trust your abilities and you learn to solve many problems on your own.
3. You trust God more. God’s help is given you in other ways instead of being channeled directly through your companions. He could use a variety of things to assist you. Even strangers you never thought would get out of their way just to be there for you would help you.
On the other hand, you’d experience these benefits when you travel with friends:
1. You’d seldom be lonely because you know that there are people beside you who care for you, people who’d make your journey more unforgettable because of their very presence.
2. You’ll always have a helping hand. When you trip or feel too tired to walk, you know you have friends who can assist you and lift you up.
3. You get to see a place in a whole new way. When you’re with friends, you don’t merely see the place through your own eyes. You also see it in the many different perspectives of your friends. Hence, you learn more and you realize many things you may not realize on your own.
At times, it is fun to travel alone, experiencing that freedom and independence, and being able to reflect and savor the richness of your journey with that kind of spiritual intimacy. And yet it is also good to travel with friends. It’s a different thing when you know somebody’s there for you. Even your happiness is multiplied with their presence.
There are places I’ve enjoyed traveling on my own. But I guess I wouldn’t want to go there again all by myself. The next time I go there, I want to have my good friends with me. In that way, I get to travel TWICE without really repeating my journey! 😉
The thing about hope is that it’s a positive force that shines the most when it’s dark. When everything’s going well, we hardly notice it’s there. But when things go against us, when our dreams fade and when we see no immediate reprieve from our troubles, that’s when hope does its best work for us.
"Where Hope Can Be Found"