Significant Footsteps

This past March, as a gift from our family to celebrate a landmark anniversary, my husband and I were blessed to be able to travel to Greece with some dear pastor friends. Our time there was relatively short, but we covered a lot of ground, traveling with a tour group by bus to many of the ancient cities and ruins therein, focusing on the places where the apostle Paul would have journeyed on his second mission. We had the most amazing guide who was extremely knowledgeable about both secular and sacred history. We truly had a wonderful time seeing and learning about this land that Paul was called to evangelize.

We concentrated on the sixteenth and seventeenth chapters in Acts, which begins by reporting the cause for Paul’s particular route to Greece. Paul and his companions were forbidden by the Holy Spirit from preaching in Asia and Bithynia. Following a course down to Troas, which is on the Aegean Sea, it was there that Paul had a vision of a man from Macedonia urging him to come and help them. Paul was convinced that this was the Lord’s will for him, and this led to his travels there and included converts such as Lydia and the Philippian jailer. This was the beginning of the Gospel’s spread into the European continent.

As one might surmise, it is truly amazing to find oneself in places where historical figures originally trod, particularly those who are a part of our Christian heritage. This was definitely a component of our experience as we felt refreshed in body and spirit beside the Zygaktis River in Philippi where Lydia was baptized, as we viewed the beautiful monument to Paul in Berea where the noble and fair-minded Jews listened attentively to the teachings from God’s Word, and as we walked among tombstones and other ancient ruins beneath Mars Hill (the Areopagus) where Paul reasoned with the men of Athens. But one thing with which I was most intrigued was the distance and length Paul had to go to follow through with his mission.

Perhaps you read with much better perspective than I can tend to do, but I can breeze through rather than think through Bible verses such as the one referred to previously: “And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, ‘Come over to Macedonia and help us.’ And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. So, setting sail from Troas, we made a direct voyage to Samothrace, and the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony” (Acts 16:9-12a, ESV). Composed of three and a half verses, a mere ninety-one words, my mind can just as easily turn this journey into a hop-skip-and a jump as it can read through this small amount of print. This would not have been the case! Every waterway was traversed in wooden vessels with likely uncomfortable accommodations. Every trek across land was done by foot, possibly accompanied by a beast of burden and/or a cart to carry necessities. As we rolled along in comfort via a motor coach from site to site, city to city, Paul would have trudged through dirt and muck in sandals and the same tunic and cloak to bring the Lord’s message to places that were often inhospitable at best, and hostile in most cases. Why? Because he had an incredible love for the Lord who saved him and chose him to help others to know that same God, the Lord Jesus.

The distances and difficulties that would have been a huge part of the apostle’s missionary journeys were things that occupied my mind as I stepped where he literally did nearly two thousand years ago. We walked on a small part of the Via Egnatia, a Roman road on which Paul would have traveled from Neopolis (now Kavala) to Philippi. That stretch is ten miles, and Paul walked much, much farther than that! This, of course, is not even touching the hardships that Paul faced to proclaim the truth of Jesus’ Gospel. The Bible passages in 2 Corinthians 6 and 11 contain a summary of the trials he endured to live out his faith. “But as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger;” (2 Corinthians 6:4-5, ESV). And in chapter eleven: “On frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers;” (2 Corinthians 11:26, ESV). That’s not exactly an idyllic life or trip plan!

This experience has given me a chance to contemplate just where my footsteps have taken me and where I will travel next on my faith journey. I have to wonder, is it significant? Will it make a difference like Paul’s steps did? Not everyone is called to go to faraway places to face dire circumstances, but we are all called somewhere, even if it’s to a neighbor’s or to the visitors in the next row at church. No matter what you’re called to do, no matter where you’re called to go, determine to take significant footsteps for the cause of Christ!

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