We went down to the river, and
listened to Dr. Cohick lecture on Philippians as the water rushed by. Again it
was so awesome to read Paul's letter in the city it was intended for! We read
though the book and again discussed the historical context and some different
theological takes on certain passages. One thing that really struck me was in
our discussion of chapter two. In verses 7 and 8 Jesus', "being made in
human likeness" I'd linked with His obedience to the Father, and His, "obedience
to death." This obedience to the Father is essential to our humanness, and
in verse 12, Paul commemorates the Philippians' obedience, and later, in verse
14, reminds them to do so without grumbling. This is a good reminder, that we should
obey God without arguing about it. However, this is not done on our own
strength but by the power of God in us. We also talked about Paul's emphasis on
unity in this book. In chapter 2:1-5, Paul describes how we should live in
unity with fellow Christians. This does not mean that we have to all think the
same but that we bring our differences together to be unified in Christ. After
we finished our lecture, I had some time to sit by the river and think and
pray. I reflected on God's continuing faithfulness and love, even in hard
times; I could see God could see the love and grace that God has shown and put
in my life these past few months even though I was going through some hard
times.
We went to the ruins of the city of
Philippi, and where able to walk around the forum. On the eastern edge of the
city saw the first church in Europe, and it was awesome to see the changes in
architecture and size as the church grew and developed it's liturgy over time.
We then drove to the ruins of
Amphipolis, were we saw the ruins of five different churches. There were five
churches because they were all, in a sense, of different denominations. This
again brought up what seems to be a reoccurring theme, that the unity of the
church. The presence of the five churches here is evidence, as well as the
history of the church, that this "division" in the church is not a
product of the Reformation and not solely a Protestant phenomenon. This
division may not as severe as we think. As I saw in the Holy Sepulcher, what
can first seem like disunity and division, can actually be seen as something
beautiful and a great sign of unity if you look at the situation with Christ in
the center. We have to learn to recognize that, as Christians, we are all
rooted in Christ. We have to look for the unity instead of looking for the
differences. As Protestants we are often too eager to accept that we are
divided, that our division is an accepted fact about Christianity. However, our
unity in the body of Christ so strongly unites us, that the differences we do
have are not so important.
We stopped at Vergina, a site of
ancient Macedonian tombs. The museum there was really well done, the excavated
tombs were cover in a building with the artifacts found there displayed around.
The tomb of Philip the second, father of Alexander the great, was there. The
artifacts were so extravagant, everything was covered in gold.
We spent
the night at a resort right at the foot of Mt. Olympus and right on the water
in a town called Leptokarya. It was so beautiful! We were able to swim in the
sea for a little while after we had finished dinner. In the later evening, we
had worship on the beach. We sang a few songs as one of the girls played the
violin. It was so beautiful to sing and praise God as the waves crashed softly
in the background. One of the songs we sang was “All Who Are Thirsty,” and the
line, “let the pain and the sorrow be washed away in the waves of his mercy,”
really stuck out to me as the waves were crashing. This reminded me of what
I’ve been thinking about a lot recently, learning to let God’s love overflow in
my life and know that his plan is what is best. God’s love can wash over and cleans
us of all our pain, troubles and worries. I really needed to be reminded of this
once again.
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