Wrong turns, scary roads, mountaintops, blowouts and then the Valleys

We had planned to take the long coast road from Dalaman to Kemer, about 280 K, but God had a different journey for us.

Signs in Turkey, I could say are misleading, a better word is possibly missing. It must be presumed that you know the way.

I thought I had planned well, we had google directions, arrows and maps etc., but I don’t think google has been here.

So we took a wrong turning, a turning that pointed to the city we were heading towards, but not the way we had planned to go.

We were amazed at the quality of the road which was leading us into the mountains, duel carriageway through the roughest of terrains, amazing engineering!

The road seemed to go on and on, and up and up, our ears popping several times as we drove.

Then we started to worry.

Our instructions were next to useless, the tiny map we had was in the boot, the land around us seemed to be abandoned, and there was nowhere to stop.

Eventually we came to a village that seemed to take up the only piece of flat land for miles. We stopped to use the facilities and to get a drink.

Ordering a coffee was quite a traumatic experience, I’m not sure many English visitors had ever stopped there, so asking directions was even more of a challenge, the village was no named on the map and the people didn’t seem to know where they were either.

Meshiel now armed with the tiny map worked it all out.

There were a number of roads, on our flat map, that we had to take to get us to our destination.

The good roads disappeared and soon we were travelling upwards on a single track road cut into the edge of the mountain, sheer drop to one side, solid rock to the other.

Up and up we traveled until we seemed to reach a peak, over 2500 M above the sea, well above everything really.

I got out of the car, went to a vantage point where an old Turkish man was standing. He seemed to have a shack type shelter about 100 m from where we were standing.

I looked towards him, and he looked towards me, both raising our eyes to the clear sky and raising a hand, as though in praise of our creator. The language of beauty! As he walked off I was there all alone, on top of the world, my heart filled with praise and my eyes with tears. A most beautiful moment that had taken possibly two hours of very scary driving.

The mountain top experiences are what Christians seem to long for, moments of close communion with God.

But they are scary moments and not easy to reach. On the mountain top there is no denying the ultimate power of God. These moments are supernatural experiences taking us beyond our human comfort zones and also out of our human control. Moments reflected in Peter’s comments on the mount of transfiguration.

Although the mountain top experience of God was wonderful and very precious, it was but a personal encounter and the building of shelter at that point would have been a selfish thing to do and I would say reckless. On the mountain there was no water and no growth, staying there would be the death of me.

As we quickly travelled down from the mountain, still on scary roads, we saw the land becoming greener and as we entered into the valley we began to drive through farm land, seeing the local farmers working so hard in the fields, in temperatures in their 30’s.

In the fields were peaches, olives, grapes and pomegranates, trees laden with fruit.

So often we long after the mountaintop experiences but it is the hard work in the valleys that produce the fruit and sustains us, hardens us and proves us.

Well after more than five hours and within 5 miles of our destination, the smell of the sea coming through the air con, there is a noise at the back of the car.

We pulled over to the edge of by now a very fast road without a hard shoulder to find our rear, road side tyre had blown out.

I have never known us so calm!

Without a fluster or a cross word and with the speed and precision of a formula one team we had it changed and on our way.

We had travelled on a road we had not planned, but we had travelled with God and picked up His peace in the beauty he had shown us on the way.

Next week I will be blogging from the wet and cold of Langley Moor.