Parables, pictures and prayers from Kaş ...eternity in their hearts

Alper and Tuğba step to a different beat. I guess them to be 30-ish. They’ve been in Kaş for six years—which makes them newcomers and still outsiders among at least some of the Turkish community. Their small jewelry store displays lovely original pieces in a wide variety of semi-precious stones. A passionate gardener and able handy-man, Alper spends many of his days doing physical labor. Evenings and other free time are for the shop. He has one of those minds that constantly runs four to six different tracks, is full of ideas, and fixes on details. Tidy order is essential for him, and he’s a natural-born recycler. “Intense” is one way I would describe him. Tuğba is beautiful, artistic, and shy. Her hands are constantly busy with new pieces during her days at the shop's small worktable while her intelligent eyes follow the flow of conversation.

They seem to treasure each other and to keep very close. And they have this gentle generosity. In memory, I watch Alper carefully choose a necklace and give it as a gift to our daughter, take me to the post-office so I can learn to pay the phone bill, and meet me at the bus station the day I leave because he doesn’t think anyone should undertake a journey with no one to see them off and wish them well.

Alper and Tuğba don’t have much stuff, but they have dreams. They watch every lira as they carefully build. When we first met they had a tiny shop in a terrible location. And enthusiasm and hope. Before that, they had a table on the street. They had sold an old family carpet to get the seed money for that. This year they’ve moved to better space and the business is growing. They have their eye on some land in the mountains 20 kilometers or so away, and already they envision fruit trees under cultivation and the beginnings of a small house.

For the merchants of Kaş one day flows into another in the ceaseless rhythm of “the season.” There is no weekend, no day off, no long lie. Shops open no later than mid-morning and are still open at midnight. Alper has been opening by 8 am to catch the boat traffic. Many vendors sleep over the shop or in a back room, and exist in the narrow radius of the shop and the tea vendor.

What a surprise, then, when Alper and Tuğba invited us to their place for a Sunday afternoon. “We work very hard,” said Alper. “And that is good. We don’t mind to work hard. But it is not good for a person to work all the time. We need time to rest, and we need time to be together. So we close the shop on Sunday and have a day off. People think we are crazy, but we do it.”

Ecclesiastes is a provocative book. Chapter 3 became well-known in the late 60’s when Joni Mitchell recorded a song based on its wisdom: “To everything, turn, turn, turn, there is a season, turn, turn, turn, and a time to every purpose under heaven….”

Ancient literature shows us a time when humanity understood life as an endless wheel circling round and round. Birth, life, death, birth, life, death. Day after day after day, with no beginning and no end, no progression or purpose. In Genesis we have the first recorded human understanding that time is linear, that there was a beginning, that there is progression, that there is purpose and an end-point. Ecclesiastes 3 speaks to this, I think, in its description of seasons and cycles of time as part of a larger purpose “under heaven.”

That writer goes on to say, in verses 9-11, “What does the worker gain from his toil? I have seen the burden God has laid on people. He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” Not only is God the author of linear time that is progressing towards the fulfillment of His purposes, but He has set some whisper of understanding in the hearts of human beings—who are, after all, created in His image.

Alper and Tuğba give me a glimpse of this as they make an utterly counter-cultural choice that manifests God’s image in them. At creation, Genesis records, God set a pattern of six days of work and one of rest—a day to step back and enjoy the fruits of labor, to fellowship, to celebrate, to be refreshed. A day that is an act of faith in a good and powerful God who is willing and able to keep the world turning and provide for our needs without our help. A day that many among those who call themselves the people of God ignore. Somehow these two grasp it, and choose to risk celebration.

O Lord, bless them! Increase their fruitfulness, even as You sustain their relationship with one another. And as Alper and Tuğba savor this simple revelation, would You show them ever more of Yourself and give them the inner freedom to choose to embrace that, too.

Full-time

Curt did something really cool the other day. We were teaching at the Torchbearer school in Albania and were asked to “give our testimony” as a way of introducing ourselves.

Curt started by asking if anyone knew what he did in his work. As I think about it, I suppose all their other teachers are pastors or missionaries or somehow in full-time employment in the church. Curt’s an oil guy. He works the upstream (subsurface) side of things—the side of the industry that gets that dark green stuff up out of the ground--and he loves his work. That came clear as he described to the students some of the excitment of getting a six-inch pipe and drill bit through several miles of rock to reach the deep places of trapped oil. “Miles” and “barrels” and “millions” and “billions” peppered his sharing.

Translator, students, staff—the collective mental gasp registered on their faces. “This is a testimony?”

Curt went on to speak of the people he works with: UAE nationals, Egyptians, Jordanians, Sudanese. Men and women. All Muslims. He talked about ways he and his colleagues share their lives in the workplace, and how much he enjoys his co-workers and the challenges they embrace as a multi-cultural team. I didn’t know that some of them call him “the preacher.” Curt also talked some about the people who come to our house, and the food, games, conversation, studies, movies and prayer that happen in our living room.

As Curt and I travel and occasionally get to teach or preach in the US, Europe or Asia people often ask what mission board we serve with. They look so disappointed when we tell them that an oil company brought us to the Middle East.

So often we think of “ministry” as something “missionaries” and “pastors” do. Or something we “normal people” do in our spare time under the auspices of some church program. Something with a title and a job description to validate it. “Youth worker.” “Sunday school teacher.” “Board member.” And don’t we elevate in degrees of status or hierarchy those who make their living from the church over those whose income derives from “secular” work?

Yet the human calling, from creation, is to fill the earth and subdue it. (Genesis 1:28.) To live in this world God made and to care for it, use it, steward it, tend to it.

We are spiritual beings, but we are also physical--of the earth and earthy. This earth God put us in charge of is full of possibilities, but it needs to be creatively, enthusiastically tended if it is to supply human need—especially as we live out the other charge to multiply and fill it up. To be a farmer or a scientist or a doctor or a water-quality inspector or a day-care provider or a bookkeeper or a civil servant or a mother—OR AN OIL GUY—is a HOLY calling.

Curt’s testimony vividly illustrated his self-understanding: “I am a full-time Christian!” No distinction exists between his “secular” and his “sacred” work. It all belongs to God. Whether he is planning a new well, engaged in dialogue about faith, exploring the back alleys and souks, or playing a game in our living room, if he is there because Jesus opened the way and gifted him to be there, and if his heart is submitted and attentive, God will be glorified and His Kingdom will be advanced.

And that’s COOL!