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Sunday, May 7, 2017

Cappadocia for the Final: Explorations

We continued exploring. CC was able to navigate us to a church we had never seen before. The fresco was unbelievable. I realized the 4 creatures mentioned in Revelation (and also in Ezekiel) were found within the amazingly preserved fresco. As I link these to the 4 Gospels and their representations of Christ, I wanted a picture to share with my Bible students!

The church was called The Church of the Columns. It was easy to see why it was so named. Can you imagine that this was the inside, but the outside just literally looks like a hole in a canyon. It's a cave. It reminded me of how God changes us and molds us in the inside. He fortifies us with pillars and fits us with beauty.

This is a fun place for a boy with some energy to climb.

A climb up some rock inside the church led to this....library? inlets for candles? We weren't sure. Wouldn't it have been beautiful with people inside singing ancient Psalms with echoes of praise inside a cave?

We continued on our giant loop hike. The next section of the trail was this steep incline. Someone had thankfully fashioned a rope to help us make the climb.





I am always the motivation to get a picture of all of us. And CC is the long-armed man to do it. We don't need a selfie stick, we have papa!

I'm not sure what was going on here, but it was too cute not to include.



At some point, the tourism industry provided a ladder to get into this church. There was even a sign pointing us that we'd found it!

Beautiful!

Though it was a long trek that day to see the three churches, it was worth it. Isn't this gorgeous? The central figure is almost always Jesus with either scenes from his life or paintings of his disciples around him. This was some type of little altar. Inside we also find places for baptism with canals running into the cave for water. We also find tombs, sometimes tiny ones for babies.

As we continued on, we found a little guy who rode his motorcycle up into the hills with oranges and a juicer to sell fresh juice to hikers. We gladly supported his business. I'm not sure a fresh orange juice ever tasted so good, in fact.

We finished our hike, tired but happy. After a short rest, we made a quick visit with the little calico on our way to dinner....her little meow sounded like a squeak toy. I thought I heard CC mumble something under his breath about that cute little meow.

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