When I was a teenage, I remember someone asking me if I ever wanted to go visit Israel, “because, I mean, it’s where Jesus lived.”
”No,” I responded, “it looks dry…and boring.”
(I was, and still am, more of a European history kind of gal.)
Still, I think I might have shocked them with my answer. It really IS where Jesus lived. I probably should’ve been more enthusiastic.
A similar situation happened when I began researching the famous places around Izmir, Turkey. I enjoy ancient history, but wasn‘t particularly moved by the fact that so many biblical events took place nearby.
But that changed when I went to Ephesus for the first time.
Though the heat was brutal (hovering around 100 degrees!) and the crowds were a bit suffocating I still managed to find myself walking quietly along the main road in Ephesus thinking, “This is where Paul walked….THIS is where PAUL walked!!”
Since he spent two years in the city, he must have visited some (not all were built in the first century) of the buildings that we wandered through 2000 years later.
And it wasn’t just Paul. The Apostle John settled in Ephesus prior to and after his exile to the nearby island of Patmos! Mary herself might have accompanied John and been a citizen of the thriving port city.
Turns out, walking in the footsteps of biblical characters is fairly moving. Emotional, even. Before, the accounts in the Bible were true to me, but not imaginable (beyond what flannel graph figures provided 😄.)
But now I could imagine Paul walking through the city, sharing the gospel with anyone that would listen. I thought of the early Christians and the church that grew and spread throughout this part of Turkey. They were real people, just like the friends and family who were visiting with me now! Shopping, worshiping, building, working, playing....just like we do. When my Paul's family visited and when we saw that the amphitheater was nearly empty, we stood near the stage and sang "Amazing Grace" together. As our voices filled the stadium (awesome acoustics...it's in the video below!) I thought about the voices raised against the Apostle Paul, shouting for his arrest, that filled the same space a few millennia ago.
Anyway, I still love European history, (and I still find the middle east dry and dusty ☺️) but my appreciation for biblical sites has grown significantly since moving to Izmir.
I wish that more people could visit and perhaps change their own ideas about tying history and faith together.
Here is a short video about our visit(s) to Ephesus. It begins with a very sweaty Brenn telling us some basic details -- this was from our first visit last July. After that, I mixed footage from two different visits that we took in November and February. Winter, it turns out, it a much nicer time to visit! Fair warning, there is a bit of “potty” humor included…as public baths never cease to cause great delight to teens and adults alike 😆 At least little Meg had the decency to call the whole situation, "uncouth!"
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