At the beginning of this trip, Tauna, Casey, and I set out to travel to all the places in Greece that Paul visited. We wanted to follow his steps, his journey. We wanted to experience the Greece that he would have experienced, at least to the best of our ability. And I’d like to say that we’ve accomplished that task. From Athens, to Thessaloniki, to Appolonia, to Amphipolis, to Kavala, to Phillipi, to Berea, and finally to Corinth… the trails has been walked (or driven).
After our stay in Kavala, we got up early and went to the ancient site of Phillipi. God blessed us with free entry as we made friends with the guard. It’s helps to be up early sometimes! Inside we saw ancient theatres where Christians were matyred. We saw the place believed to be the jail where Paul and Silas praised their way to freedom. We saw the forum where they would have been flogged. All the persecution we’ve seen along this trip, and there we stood on an ancient example of the same thing. It’s like you could still feel God’s power resonating in the earth, and one simple prayer would bring forth and earthquake to set the captives free. It was a little more than cool.
That day we drove through Appolonia and Amphipolis along the Egnatian Way, the road Paul would have walked along. They didn’t have much there, but it was a beautiful drive. The one archeological site in those towns was way up on a hill overlooking the sea. We drove up there but nobody was around, definetly not a major tourist site. The gates were locked, but as we were walking around the hilltop, a worker came out and motioned for us to ahead and take a minute inside looking around. God is good, otherwise we would not have been able to see the site. The worker was kind enough for to wait for us.
We continued our drive back through Thessaloniki, and down to Veria, the ancient city of Berea. We had planned to spend the night there. God’s plans are always better than ours though. We got to town and couldn’t find a place in our price range to stay, so we prayed and prayed. But finally, we decided to go to a site in the city called “Paul’s Altar,” eat dinner, and try our luck further down the road. The problem was that it was getting dark, we were now driving through the mountains, and the next big town was quite a bit down the road. Just outside of Veria though, we saw a sign for a hotel. We followed them down some twisting roads into the mountains.
We had our faith to keep us going, we were ready for an adventure that night, and as we pulled into the hotel, we knew the only way we’d get to stay there was by the power of God. It was beautiful. Tauna and I tried our best to give them the sob story that we didn’t know where to stay, we were poor missionaries and couldn’t afford expensive places, and we had a tent if he’d just let us sleep in his yard. The hotel guy was about to crack and give us a room for our price, but his wife wasn’t so relenting. He did give us directions to a church, 14 kms down the road, that he thought had a campsite beside it. That’s better than camping alongside of the road, so we hopped back in the car, headed to a church, Panagia Sumela.
I marked the milage (or kilo-milage) on the car. After we had traveled the required 14 km, we looked for the church. We only saw one road, with a sign completely in Greek. God was directing our steps as we took the right hand turn and climbed slowly up the side of a mountain on a narrow one way road. As we got to the top, the road widened, and it was like a huge lookout over the valleys, and mountains, right at sunset. Off to the left was a huge church. This must be our place, so we got out and started to walk down the steps to the church.
In my head I was thinking, “What do you say to these people…. We heard you can camp here?” This could be funny. At the bottom of the steps we met an old man and he started talking to us in Greek. I was like, “Man, we can’t speak Greek, this guy won’t be much help.” About that time he caught on to what we were saying, and cupped his hand and put them underneath his tilted head. “YES THAT’S IT! We want to sleep!” He told us to follow him, and around the corner was a little office. Two nice young Greeks helped us get a room for the cheapest price we’ve paid yet. We were staying in a monastary!
It was great because the veiw was amazing, and nothing but God’s glory shown through the windows. We had been looking for a trashy hotel in town, but God had blessed us with the peace and quite of a mountain monastary overlooking the valleys of Greece. Wow, I felt loved and cherished. My faith grew a little that day.
The next day we traveled to the middle of Greece to see Meteora. It’s a huge rock formation that has monastaries built on top of the peaks. It was insane to think that they were even built at all, let alone that they are still being used and developed. Tauna, the realitor, noted that the churches in Greece always get the prime real estate. I think she’s right.
We only spent the afternoon there before heading up to a mountain lake and town called Ioannina. We relaxed for two days there and met some of the locals. Then we headed down the coast to ancient Olympia, the start of the Olympic games. As a sports fan, it was very cool to see the ancient stadium and the archway and tunnel the athletes would have walked down. One building on site was built for the Emperor Nero to stay in as he came to watch the games. Nero is the emporer who killed so many Christians during his reign.
Finally, we headed to Corinth, to see a place Paul spent so much time, and invested so much energy into. He ministered to the Corinthians who worshipped many idols and did so many horrible things in worship to those idols. Ancient Corinth is probably the best preserved of all the sites we saw. You could almost rebuild the town in your mind with what was left, unlike the other sites where you sometimes didn’t know a column from a step. Everywhere at that site was cool because Paul would have spent so much time there. The fountains, the store-fronts, the roads, the temples. He was a bold man to stand up in the face of all the idolatry there and proclaim Christ. We turn away so easily in the face of oppostition these days. But Paul, in front of the towering temple of Apollo spent his days sharing the love of Christ, even after all his persecution in other Greek cities.
We had finished our journey. We’ve been through most of Paul’s second missionary journey after his vision of the man in Macedonia. God has been enlightening us on His power and provision. He has strengthened our faith in little ways like finding a nice place to stay, and getting places to park, and finding our way from town to town. The same powe that’s working in the book of Acts is living in us as well. It’s active in our daily lives, in Greece, in China, in Guatemala, in Thailand, and in America. I pray we ask for more of it. I pray that we use it. I pray we realize God the power to do what He wants, and He can do it any way He wants. Exciting…what a monumental moment in my walk with Christ.
