Faith: New Levels

My family loves traveling. My father and I were talking about some of our favorite places we have visited so far in the world. Mine, of course being Greece. The culture, faith community, Biblical history, scenery, and cuisine all made the country a place I would love to go back to. My father then mentioned their neighbor Turkey as one of the most spectacular places he's ever visited.

One of the intriguing things he mentioned were underground cities, levels and levels deep. At first I thought he meant layers of cities that were thousands of years old that were built on top of each other. No, he meant actual cities, big enough for up to 20,000 people, and up to 20 levels deep! This is so fascinating to me. We spent some time researching around and looking up pics of Derinkuyu, Turkey. Derinkuyu was the largest of these cities, but there are over 200 underground cities in the area. These were not just holes in the ground where you would hang out for a little while. These were fully functioning cities with toilets, a ventilation system, a system of keeping livestock (what?!?!), multi-room houses, wine-presses, chapels.... how did they do all of this 2000 years ago? The crazy thing is that these were only discovered in the 1960s and people had been living in a city above all of this for YEARS.

The underground cities were intended as a place for protection from invasion and, more importantly, they became a hiding place for Christians escaping persecution from the Roman Empire. I don't think in our very blessed situation in America we understand what this "kind" of Christianity is. At the least we tend to forget. Their whole life was in hiding just to stay alive, because of their faith in Jesus Christ. We are so blessed to be able to worship, evangelize, fellowship, and live freely as we follow Jesus. To their advantage, and many other circles of believers around the world today, I cannot imagine any "luke-warm" Christians devoting their lives to living in those caves. No half-hearted believers were pretending to be a Follower as they fled for their lives and hid. Hypocrites were not polluting their fellowship of believers.

I pray my faith would increase everyday to that of those blessed saints. And I am so grateful that they are in Paradise now with their Savior who promised them (and us):
"He has caused us to be born again to a living HOPE through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an INHERITANCE that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you...in this you REJOICE, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various TRIALS, so that the tested GENUINENESS of your FAITH..may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." (1 Peter 1:3-7)

Keeps things in perspective.

check it...
http://www.picsroll.com/2009/09/derinkuyu-mysterious-underground-city.html