There is a wonderful family-oriented sport called Geocaching. There are over 1, 250,000 treasures hidden around the world that can be located by getting the coordinates for a cache from the Geocaching website and then with the use of a handheld GPS device be led to within a few feet of the cache. It is great fun for there are very easy ones and very challenging ones. Associated with these caches are something called “Travel Bugs.” They are objects with a registered tag number also on the Geocaching website. “Travel Bugs” move all around the world as people carry them from cache to cache. Why? Just for fun.
Four and a half years ago our California son put a small plastic black dog in a cache in California with the object of people taking it from cache to cache until it ended up at the grave site of his son in Ohio. Yesterday it arrived. The person who took it to the cemetery took a photo of it by the gravestone. For four and a half years it was moved all over the country by gracious people trying to get it to Ohio. I am not sure how many people helped but it was a lot.
I mention this because sometimes we are so overwhelmed by the news of bad people and the bad things they do that we despair that there are any good people left in the world. There are. Many people who we do not know and never will know became involved in the project. Why did they do it? Because it was a loving thing to do. We are surrounded each day by people who care. How grand!
Written by Roger Bothwell on January 6, 2011
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
Rogerbothwell.org