By Brad Campbell –

Just a thought to help start your week.

Many of you, because of the photos that I share on a weekly basis, have commented to me or asked me questions about what seems to be a lifetime of traveling my family and I have enjoyed.  I’m amused at that assumption, really, because I’ve never thought we did a lot of traveling at all.  It’s just that we take full advantage of every opportunity we have been given to see and experience something new.

Those of you who travel some will agree with these words that my college friends and I used to jokingly repeat from time to time – “Wherever I go, there I am.”  You see, no matter where I have been in my small world over the past half century or so, I am always the same fellow.

In my random picture taking as I roam, I’m always amazed by any animal activity.  One sunny morning as we stood on the pier walkway near the Mayflower reconstruction at Plymouth Harbor, there were not yet many people around, but there were plenty of birds.  This particular pretty purple pigeon walked and cooed and walked and cooed up and down the banister.  Not afraid of me, it was fairly close.  But it didn’t matter to the bird that I was there, that I was so much larger than it, that I was so very close.  The pigeon just was itself.

Pigeons are not that unusual.  I see many of the fat birds roaming all over the parking lots at Wal-Mart and various other stores.  And a pigeon by any other name is still a pigeon.  (Didn’t Shakespeare write about that?)  Pigeons are pigeons whether they frequent the neighborhood shopping center or hang around historical sites in places like Plymouth, Massachusetts.  Be they pretty, purple, or otherwise, they are still pigeons.

No matter where I roam in this world, I am still Brad.  It doesn’t matter whether I’m at the local store, staring down into the Grand Canyon or looking up from underneath the Eiffel Tower.  It doesn’t matter if I’m watching the waves of the Atlantic Ocean from the sands of Canon Beach, Oregon, or the waves of the Pacific Ocean hitting the rocky shores of Portland, Maine.  In either place, I am who I am.  And that is a child of God.

Those closest to me have heard me tell that one particular reminder my mother used to give us as we kids headed out the door for whatever activity when we were younger was, “Remember who you are and whose you are.”  Certainly that had relation to the fact that she and our father, who just happened to be the preacher also, would be watching and listening, but so would the Lord.  We belonged to Him, and we would be representing Him wherever we were.

As a child of God, I represent Him wherever I go.  I am Brad wherever I go.  I may not be as pretty as the purple Plymouth pigeon, but I can be a bold Bible believer, taking Him with me along life’s journeys.  That’s our challenge for the week ahead!

Just a thought.