Oct
08
2007
My First Visit to Romania & The Idol of Security
I was fifteen when I first set foot in Eastern Europe. We were driving from Budapest, Hungary into Timisoara, Romania. It was night. The van was so cramped I thought my legs would stay bunched up permanently. We had carried way too much luggage to Romania, everything from toilet paper to chewing gum, to enough snacks to keep us satisfied on a deserted island for a month. From the looks of our luggage, that’s where you would’ve thought we were going. I was so disoriented that I didn’t even notice the rolling hills and Carpathian mountains up ahead. All I saw was the mountain of luggage that made the van so claustrophobic we had to open a window.
The only thing I kept thinking about was the moon, high above the treetops. I kept trying to catch a glimpse of the moon through the cracks between the suitcases. It was my only point of reference. Whenever I saw it, I remembered that I was in the same world. The roads, the restaurants, the people, the language – there was so much that was unfamiliar for a teenager. At least the moon was still there.
Security. One of the lessons I learned from my first trip to Romania was that security can become an idol. We want comfort, security, and an easy, painless life. We don’t want events that rock our world or shake us out of complacency. We want to capture the essence of ease and comfort and then hold on to them for the rest of our lives.
And yet, God wants us to find our ultimate security in Him – not in our country, our language, our culture, or yes, even the moon. Going to Romania definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone. It was like boarding a menacing roller coaster for the first time, excited to be doing something so thrilling, but scared to death of being turned upside down.
And the trip to Romania did indeed turn me upside down. It was life-changing to see how Romanians worshipped the same God that I did, even though their worship was so different. Here I was, in a world so different from home, yet I was serving the same God, meeting with His people, and teaching from the same Bible.
written by Trevin Wax © 2007 Kingdom People blog