Gratefulness, Anger, and God

By Haley Lerner

I wish it were easy to describe what it has been like to travel around this beautiful country for the past two weeks. I wish I could describe the feeling I have walking along ancient Roman roads. I wish I could describe the amazement of understanding biblical references by actually being here. I wish I could describe the freedom of the crystal clear Mediterranean. But words don’t seem to be enough.

I am so grateful to be here. I am so grateful to have stories to tell my friends and family when I return. Stories like ones that involve extremely embarrassing things like tripping over a stupid Roman road.

In a skirt.

While all 27 of my fellow classmates, professors, and travelers were right behind me.

But this wasn’t just any road—this one led to the Asklepion, an ancient place of healing. So when our wonderful tour guide, Cenk, poured water over my hand to remove the embedded stone, he technically healed me at the Asklepion.

Pretty cool, right?

            I am grateful for the friendships I have made and deepened here—the people to whom I get to talk about real things like God and biblical truth and weird American culture and boys. But I am also grateful for the people I am getting to know and the amazing experiences we get to share.

#oscarselfie

            I am grateful that we get to travel with scholars who have dedicated their lives to this book we call the Bible and aren’t afraid to say that it matters. I am grateful for their love for scripture and the new ways in which I am beginning to love it again too.

Dr. Yeatts' first glimpse of Patmos! Too cute not to put in.

            I am grateful for the work archaeologists have done to put these cities, gymnasiums, temples, and libraries together so we have a chance to step back in time to see just how immense and magnificent these structures once were.  

The library in Ephesus

            I am so grateful for the ability to travel and see the world. As we got off the boat at Samos, I remember being so tired. I was seasick from the boat, hot from the scorching sun, and frustrated with customs. As we were waiting for our tour bus, I couldn’t help but notice a group of people, mostly men, being led around by guards in masks, inspecting them like one would inspect livestock before purchasing it. As it turned out, they were refugees, probably from Syria, to seek asylum in a country not being torn apart by violence and war.

            It struck me how we could both be standing only 50 yards away from each other and be in two completely different worlds. We both had just stepped off a boat into an unfamiliar country that speaks a language that looks and sounds nothing like our own. Suddenly, my problems seemed so miniscule. Here I am, standing on this island for school, a word that carries a privilege very few ever get to experience, and there they are, doing whatever they can to escape from a country where the risk of death is in every corner.

I was grumpy getting off that boat.

They were probably terrified.

This whole idea of “birth lottery” has troubled me for a very long time, but in the Messiah bubble, it’s much harder to understand what that actually means. But when I looked down at the American passport I was carrying—

The modern equivalent to "Roman citizenship"—

The tiny blue book whose privileges I only receive because I happened to be born in the wealthiest country in the world—

I was angry.

I am still angry.

I am angry that my biggest problem right now is dead camera battery and only a crappy iPhone camera with which to take pictures.

I am angry that I get an $80,000 education while most women don’t even have the right to their own bodies.

I am angry that I was born as a member of the “Empire” that gives me the privilege of jumping on a plane and flying across the world while others live in constant fear of death.

As I travel around Turkey and learn about its history and its culture, I do so as humbly as I can because that is all I can do right now.  I could continue to rant about this dichotomy in my head that says “I am so grateful” but “I am so angry” and try to deal with this global phenomenon we call injustice, but this is not the time and place to do so.

One, because this post can only be 1000 words.

And two, because I don’t really know how to go about solving it.

So while I am in Turkey, I want to learn as much as I can. I want to engage in this culture and make myself a global citizen so that hopefully I can figure out how to be a constructive member of humanity in the future. Dwelling on the frustration of my own privilege is not going to do anything right now, but anger is a powerful emotion. I pray that it continues to challenge the way I live.

But I don’t want to make it seem as if my experience here has been predominantly negative. In a country that is torn between religious fundamentalism and secularism, headscarves and feminism, I cannot help but find God, front and center, in all of what I have seen and done.

In the middle of the Mediterranean, where the beach is but a speck along the skyline

In the piercing chant of Arabic over Istanbul calling the faithful to prayer

In the craziness and buzz of a Turkish bazaar

In the white cliffs of intricately deposited calcium

In the beauty of bilingual worship

In ancient caves where Jesus—burning eyes, star wielding and all—appeared to John

In an intricate underground city, where other Christians hid in fear of their own persecution

There is God.