Columns

High in the hills above ancient Alexander Troas is a granite quarry. I had seen a photograph of it in a book. I asked our guide to take me there. He did not know where it was but we drove around, followed a hunch, then a sign, then the advice of some local police. We finally located the obscure site. We parked the car and followed a small path. At its end, were eight huge completed columns. They are 40 feet long and weigh 60 tons. They were dug out of the solid rock wall. Using time and effort, ancient stonemasons transformed the raw rock into smooth round pieces of art. Looking at the rock face it seems overwhelming to imagine approaching it 2000 years ago and knowing how much work lay ahead to release these coulumns from the surrounding rock. 

These are not the only columns. 100 feet away at the entrance of the quarry are two more. Surveys of the area have identified several other columns in the area abandoned on their way to the port at Troas. Just off the shore in Troas, a load of columns juts out of the sea. They are a testimony to a shipwreck and a failed attempt to deliver the columns to some Roman building site.

They are marvels of engineering. First, they were carved. Then they were transported 5.5 miles over difficult and uneven terrain. We still don't know how they did it. Finally, they were put onto ships and sent to the far corners of the Mediterranean. Columns from this quarry have been identified in Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy, Libya, Greece, Tunisia, France, Portugal, and Israel. They seem impossible to make or move but the evidence is to the contrary.

It's hard to comprehend the creators abandoning them after so much work. There are no records. Archeologists, trying to reconstruct the situation, postulate that the financial collapse of the Roman Empire, multiple earthquakes, and epidemics led the area to be abandoned. The workers just walked away and faded into history. 

Some of the sentinels still stand, holding up roofs, porches, and churches, the purpose for which they were created. These abandoned ones never got to support anything. As we stood in the quarry Ephesians 2:10 came to mind, "For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." It made me think that God sees all of our potential. Over time, God chisels away what does not belong to our future. Eventually, life and circumstance create the exact person God needs for the world. All we have to do is step up and bear the load God designed for us. Doesn't that sound better than lying abandoned, forgotten, and unused?