Postcards from the Front is an occasional feature I plan to post here of awesome places and unforgettable moments I captured along the way.
Khor Virap, Armenia, on the plains of Ararat
July 22, 2017
Set out early this morning before the sun and heat rose higher. Temperatures most days this week in Yerevan have been in the hundreds or more. So we raced the sun westward to Khor Virap. Our road cut through a rich land. Huddled along the wayside were produce stands stuffed with corn and watermelons, tomatoes, apples, and apricots, which were just coming in. I saw many orchards specked with these dull orange delights. Well-manicured vineyards stretched out in neat rows to a western horizon dominated by Mount Ararat, towering over all and still sporting its winter cap in late July. This mountain is a magnificent, timeless witness to the unfolding story of redemption.
Reached Khor Virap, an ancient church that crowns a little stone prominence rising above the plains but dwarfed by nearby Ararat. At the foot of Khor Virap is the Armenian-Turkish border, sharply defined with razor wire and accented with guard towers. All the land in view, including Noah’s mighty mountain, was for centuries the homeland of the Armenian people. Caught between its powerful, ravenous neighbors—Turkey, Persia, and Russia—their lands were absorbed, culminating in the twentieth century’s first genocide. Sadly, it would be only the first of many in a century-long chronicle of evil filled with the gas chambers of Auschwitz, the chilling images of tortured children at Tuol Sleng, and all the shallow graves that stain the faces of Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Syria, and Iraq.
Several olive trees cling to the stony slopes of Khor Virap. I plucked some of their leaves, recalling the passage in Genesis where Noah “sent forth the dove out of the ark. And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth, was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth” (Gen. 8:10-11).
While these olive leaves were a beautiful symbol of peace for Noah, these lands have never known peace since then. The razor-wire lined border that is just a stone’s throw from where I sit is one more witness to that fact. Christ is the only one who can take the children of Cain and cleanse their hearts and hands and give them peace with God and peace with each other.
[Excerpt from A Company of Heroes by Tim Keesee, published by Crossway 2019]