Day 9

Bob’s Sabbatical

Day 9, September 8, 2009

 

            One of
the things about this course is that we are putting Paul into a context that we
can begin to understand.  He was
basically Jesus’ age.  Current dating
places Jesus’ death in 30 A.D.  Paul’s “Damascas
Road Conversion” probably occurred within a year of that date.  Paul spent the next 35 years proclaiming
Jesus the Christ on what are called 4 “Missionary Journeys.”  We covered some pretty barren territory in
the bus today – imagine what it was like to have walked that distance?

Today we actually went somewhere
that Paul himself went.  We are in the
area of Galatia, and Paul wrote a letter to the “Galatians,” but no one knows
exactly where the Church(s) were.  He
did, on his first Missionary Journey, come to Antioch in Pisidia (not the
Antioch in southeastern Turkey).  We
toured the remains of the town that Paul stayed in, made tents and other
leather items in, and where he gathered friends.

            On our
way from Konya, we went through the Lake District, and stopped in Beysehir,
whose lake is the 3^rd largest in Turkey.  We went to a 3^rd Century Mosque,
which has beautiful wood interiors.  An
award-winning singer chanted for us inside. 
As I am typing this, I am listening to chanting from a minaret at a
Mosque only a block away from my window. 
Since there is no air conditioning, I fear this will be a long
night.  This is Ramadan for Muslims,
which means th ey do not eat during the day. 
Towns, like Beysehir, have late-night festivals.  I hope that is not true here.  In Konya this morning we were awakened by a
street drummer at 3:30 am (to remind people that they only had a half an hour
to eat before the daily fast began.  Then
at 4:00 a.m. the loud speaker from the nearby minaret woke us with the first
prayer of the day.

            We then
went to a Hittite Shrine that dates from the 12^th – 11^th
Century B.C.