Azerbaijan: The Villages

Kish, Sheki, Lahic + Pictures

If you missed my first post about Azerbaijan, I highly recommend checking it out here.

Looking back on some of my post-trip reflections, this paragraph sums up what the four days we spent out in the villages of Azerbaijan were like:

I was hit over and over again while in Azerbaijan with the realization of how small I am and how big God is. And it humbled and amazed me that even though I’m so insignificant in the scheme of the universe, God calls me His and cares about the details of my life. I think I’ve grown up hearing it so much that it gets glossed over, and I tend to brush it aside and assume that God doesn’t REALLY care about my life’s details, so it was a humbling and trust-growing realization.

Wednesday, May 11th, following a day spent walking around Baku, we headed out to the regions for a few days. Our first night, we stayed in a village called Kish. In Kish, a group of us went on a hike, an actual-uphill-climbing-over-some-rocks-crossing-a-large-stream/small-river hike. It was one of my favorite experiences of the whole trip because it was on this hike that the realization of my finiteness hit me hard. We were up north, almost at the Russian border, hiking at the base of the Caucasus Mountain range. The views were breath-taking. The mountains towered over us, seeming to expand forever.

We took another hike two days later in the village of Lahic, which brought the same realization (the second big lesson of my trip) crashing down on me again— I am so small, yet still significant to the Father.

But let me back up to Sheki. Located along the Old Silk Road, we called Sheki home for our second night out in the regions. On our way to Sheki from Lahic, we were able to have tea at a family’s home. This family humbled us greatly through their willingness to give to us even in their poverty. As Christians, being treated with such kindness and selflessness by an Islamic family was remarkable. Not because Muslims cannot be kind and generous people— most actually are. The remarkable thing was the love we felt from this family which is often absent in our own Christian churches and homes in the states. They embodied so clearly what it looks like to give to others so freely.

We had a similar experience in Lahic, which was our last stop while out in the regions. We stayed in the home of a young couple and were welcomed so graciously by people who we could not even communicate with beyond body language, hand gestures, and a lot of “good morning”s and “how are you?”s.

The third major theme/lesson of the trip to Azerbaijan definitely revolved around hospitality and generosity. To experience a culture where hosting guests is an honor, not a stressor, showed me such a different way of looking at communing with people. Christians are called to love our neighbors, and in a very tangible way, the families and individuals we encountered in Azerbaijan (though not all Christians) did just that. It was a humbling lesson to realize how often I am “too busy” to be with others, and that maybe that is not a good thing.

Differences in culture, race, religion, personal beliefs, they didn’t matter to these families. What mattered is that we are individuals who they saw as worth taking the time to fellowship with and get to know. I think that’s how Jesus loved people: by making time to slow down and just be with them. And I definitely believe that how Jesus loved people is how we are called to love people. Actively, intentionally, faithfully.