Wow, another really busy day. I was thinking back on what we did today and I couldn’t believe that our visit to Colossae and Laodicea had only been this morning, it seems like it was a week ago.
In addition to visiting Laodicea and Colossae today, we visited Didymus, which was the sacred city of the other city we saw today. I can’t exactly remember what its name was, but I think it was Miletus. At least I’m pretty sure it started with an M.
Every morning we have someone do devotions and today it was my turn. I had a class last semester where every class our prof. would randomly ask someone to give a little devotion for the class. So at the beginning of the semester I threw together a quick, easy one that I thought might be applicable to seminary students. And a month ago, when I signed up for today’s devotions and realized that no one on the trip had been in that class, I decided to just use the same one. It just happened to turn out that my devotion was from Colossians, and the day that I ended up giving it was on the day we visited Colossae. And the emotional and spiritual timing of it was perfect too. It was cool to see God work through me that way today.
(The Colossian tell is between my fingers. I'm not sure what possessed me to make that face.)
There wasn’t much to see at Colossae, it is just a big mound (the technical word is ‘tell.’) I guess an Australian University has submitted a proposal to begin excavations on the tell, but they want to do it in the winter months (their summer, so students could go work on it) and the Turks say that they only allow excavations in June, July, and August. No one is sure why that is the case, but those are the rules. Regardless of the fact that we didn’t see any ruins or anything, it was cool to stand at the base of the tell (it was too muddy to climb up to the top) read the book of Philemon and think about the runaway slave Onesemus coming back with Paul’s letter in his hand to face his old master Philemon.
Laodicea was very cool. We read the letter to the Laodiceans from Revelation in the theater there. The city of Laodicea was very wealthy (it was a banking center,) it was a medical center famous for its eye salve, and it was a textile center famous for its black wool. But Jesus tells them that they are poor, blind, and they need to put on the white clothing of God. The lukewarm water stuff may either be to contrast the water of Laodicea with that of Heiropolis (hot springs) and Colossae (cold mountain streams) or it may be a reference to the fact that the springs that were Laodicea’s water source were two kilometers away from the city and after the water had travelled that distance by pipe, it was lukewarm. By using this image, Jesus is contrasting usefulness of hot water (recuperative) and cold water (refreshing) with lukewarm water, which is good for nothing.
(I'm standing in front of an old water tower/container in Laodicea.)
After Laodicea (which is very close to both Colossae and Hierapolis) we drove down to the coast again to visit Didymus and Miletus. Didymus means twin, and it was the twin of Miletus because Didymus had a temple of Apollo there and Miletus had one to Artemis, and Apollo and Artemis were twins. There was a sacred road that ran between the two that pilgrims followed. We could see a lot of the remains of Apollo’s temple at Didymus and it was enormous. Only two of the pillars were at full height and they were massive. Didymus is also where I sprained my ankle. So I was in moderate pain as we went through Miletus. I remember that the area around the city was beautiful (as always) the city was massive, it used to be on the ocean, and they worshipped dolphins there. I’m pretty sure that it’s in the Bible somewhere too. Fortunately I took notes, I just can’t remember what I wrote.
(Look really closely, I'm standing in front of the pillar base in front of the right pillar. This is the picture I sprained my ankle to get.)
(The theater in Miletus.)
And that was pretty much it for today. During our bus rides I hosted our semi-regular awards ceremony (paper plates that point out notable things people have done on the trip,) David Park, who I will have to spend some time writing about one of these days, performed acupuncture on a carsick person with a toothpick, and someone bought and passed around some candy that I’m pretty sure was tree-sap flavored. Oh, we also got to spend some time with a Turkish pastor and his wife, which was really, really cool. So, all in all it was a typical day.
Until tomorrow, thanks for reading.
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