by David Melton
It was well past 3:30 in the morning. We were 6,000 miles from home, 44 of us, as we rambled off the big boat onto the dark dock. Day six of the Boston Baptist College Study Trip, 2013 edition (see photo on page 27). When we prepare study trips for our students each year, we always wear ourselves out for months planning and covering logistics. We want our Boston students to experience biblical and church history sites that will leave a mark on the heart! But I am keenly aware that when dragging dozens of college undergrads all over the world, off the beaten path, on a shoestring budget, with ambitious itineraries … you have to cover all the bases or there are more potential problems than I care to imagine.
That is why at 3:31 a.m. on that Saturday morning, as the behemoth “Blue Star Ferry” closed up its doors behind us on that shadowy dock on Greece’s Dodecanese Isle called Patmos … well, my heart was pounding pretty good. I have long ago learned not to let them see me sweat, but this tiny island, in the middle of the night, with so many students. And now we had to wander on foot — at 3:32 a.m. — to a hotel that I wasn’t exactly sure how to locate, and hope … pray … that all those emails had done their work. It’s just a part of the world where most things don’t go as you plan or expect.
We slogged up a hill, until after a few hundred yards I saw it … the Hotel Effie! It was no Hilton, I assure you, but it sure looked beautiful that night. And the lights were on! That meant that the proprietor on that little bump of land in the Aegean Sea was awake. Imagine. Exactly one boat available to Patmos in a five-day window … one boat to an island that has no airport … one boat that arrived in the middle of the night? My plan had worked.
Why do we go through so much trouble. Simple, really. We are determined to do everything we can to imprint on our students not only a working knowledge of the Scriptures, but also the compulsion to understand God’s Word and take it genuinely to heart. So how could we miss a chance to spend 28 hours on this island where, apparently alone, the last author of the last book of the Bible heard inspired words from God, and wrote them down for successive generations? Think about it! The last spot on earth and the last time God’s inspired “voice” was heard.
I wonder, is it worth it? What price would we pay to see an 18-year-old sit on a rock overlooking the sea, and think about being exiled for the testimony of the Lord Jesus, and “being in the Spirit on the Lord’s day.”
I don’t wonder very long. I will be wandering around with some of these same students and a bunch of new ones next spring.