We've all heard and experienced the old saying of, “into everyone's life, a little rain must fall”, and sometimes it doesn't just rain, it pours. In the midst of a storm, God softened the pelting of the rain and gave me a once in a lifetime experience.
A few months after I became born again, my world started to implode. My best friend lost a very good job, and the only work he could find sent him to Athens , Greece . A few days before he left, I lost my job; I was devastated and emotionally lost. I was good at what I did, but I became a victim to the suck ups and India outsourcing cheap labor game; the quality of my work was completely ignored. I called another friend and said, “Why is this all happening to me? I came to Jesus and now my life's gone to hell!” There are times God strips everything away from you to get your attention, or he allows Satan to do it for Him.
I sat at home completely depressed on a level I didn't even want to talk to good co-workers who had become exceptional friends. One day, my girlfriend made me an offer I couldn't refuse. “Sue, stop sulking – get on a plane and go visit Fred in Greece for a few weeks; it will do you a world of good.” I couldn't leave the house and the bills just sitting here; she offered to take care of everything for me. Before I knew it, I was on the first leg of a long overseas plane trip to Athens , Greece for the experience of a lifetime.
Normally things do not work out that way for me. You know the old saying – “if it weren't for bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all”? My luck makes that kind of luck look good. I could be parked and a cop could “paint” my car with a laser gun and clock me doing seventy-five miles per hour – that's MY luck! When the trip to Greece fell together perfectly, I thought something was wrong and I was waiting for the shoe to drop. It never did, but I figured out why.
Sometimes you get exactly what you ask for, and I had asked in prayer months before for God's help in understanding His Word. As a baby Christian, I had trouble reading the Bible, much less understanding it. It struck my mind as all gobbledygook that made absolutely no sense. I remember hearing on a Christian station a woman who had been in the same boat as I was sinking in. She said she didn't understand the Bible and prayed to God to reveal His Word to her in a way she could understand. He did. At that moment, I prayed to God and asked Him to do the same thing for me, using what He considered to be my strongest learning suit. God reminded me of this prayer when I was packing.
It all came together and made sense: God had opened the door to the realities of His Word, and I was going to walk through to a new, deeper understanding between the Creator of the universe and myself. He was faithful to answer a prayer in a way I could've never guessed.
A few days after I had arrived in Athens and got myself adjusted to an eight hour time difference, I cautiously started exploring the world around me from a small, cramped apartment near the base of the Parthenon. I didn't know what to expect, but I found everywhere I went, I was looking for the apostle Paul's steps to come alive. In the end, I never did find the connection I had hoped for, but in retrospect, the revelations received instead were priceless.
Athens did a lot for my world perspective as well as my Biblical understanding. There's no substitute for walking a mile in a man's shoes, or in my case, walking two months in the man's sandals all over Greece . There did come a time I gave up on feeling a connection with Paul in this place, but not because I didn't want to find it. I found Aeropagus and Mars Hill, I sat on them and pondered many deep and shallow thoughts as the evening sun painted my face with warm hues of reds and yellows. Letting go of the original quest, I sat back and decided to let God do the talking and teach me instead of trying to learn it myself.
It was only after I made peace with this stance that the journey of a thousand miles began with the first step. The Roman agora at the base of the Parthenon held answers to questions I hadn't seriously asked myself. Wandering through mossy stones and various altars, I felt as if I were treading on the dead in a cemetery. It was noon, but this place was dark in spirit. “Altar for the dead”, “Altar to the twelve gods” and many other relics jumped out at me and screamed in their shrill pagan voice, “We are not dead!”
