It was the summer of 1994 when my wife and our children and I traveled through central Türkiye. The road carried us across the dry plateau until we reached Cappadocia—a landscape so strange and beautiful it looked as though it had been shaped by another hand. Wind and rain had carved towers and ridges of volcanic ash into shapes that seemed half sculpture, half dream. Every horizon was a skyline of stone candles, their soft tufa sides streaked with light and shadow.
We found a small hotel in the village of Göreme, and to our children’s delight it was carved directly into the mountainside. Our rooms tunneled into the rock, cool even in the heat of day. The walls were rough but clean, the lamps flickered softly, and at night the wind moaned through the narrow valley like a living voice. Somewhere far above, stars glittered in a sky so clear it seemed newly made. I remember lying awake, thinking how strange it felt to be inside a mountain—and yet to feel utterly safe.
The next morning, our host told us about the underground cities scattered beneath the region. He spoke with pride and reverence, as though describing the veins of the earth itself. Whole communities once lived below us, he said—families, farmers, monks, teachers, and priests. There were tunnels connecting village to village, rooms for wine, for prayer, for children, and for hope. I listened, amazed, wondering what it would be like to live your faith twenty-five stories down.
Later that day we visited one of those places—Derinkuyu. From the surface it looked like nothing: a nondescript entrance in a dry field, a few stone steps disappearing into shadow. But once you took those first steps, the world changed. The light faded. The air cooled. The sound of the wind disappeared, replaced by the faint echo of footsteps and voices ahead. We descended carefully, each turn bringing a deeper quiet.
It’s said Derinkuyu stretches nearly two hundred feet underground, about twenty-five stories deep. That’s taller than many city buildings, but in reverse—a skyscraper of faith built downward instead of upward. Archeologists believe as many as twenty thousand people once lived there. They had stables for their animals, wells for water, kitchens with blackened ceilings, and massive round stone doors that could roll into place if danger approached. Air shafts—narrow, vertical arteries—ran from top to bottom, bringing breath to the hidden city. It was ingenious, intricate, and astonishingly human.
But what moved me most wasn’t the engineering. It was the realization that this vast underworld was built not for glory, but for survival. It was faith’s last refuge. Early Christians had come here to hide—from persecution, from soldiers, from the madness of empire. They sang their hymns in the dark, whispered prayers where no sunlight reached, and raised their children by candlelight. Even twenty-five stories down, they kept believing that God could hear them.
> “If I make my bed in the depths,” the psalmist wrote, “You are there.”
Standing there, I could almost hear their echo. Every breath of that ancient air seemed to carry their courage. I imagined the hush before worship, the flicker of oil lamps, the murmur of psalms rising through the stone. They must have wondered, as we all do at times, whether light could find them in such a place. Yet somehow it always did.
The guide led us through narrow passages, our shoulders brushing the walls. At one turn, he stopped to show us a rough-hewn cross carved into the rock. “Church,” he said simply. The room was small—no pews, no pulpit, just an altar-shaped ledge and the faint outlines of frescoes long faded by centuries of smoke. I stood in that humble chapel, thinking of the words of Jesus: “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.” And I realized how upside-down the kingdom of God truly is. These people had survived precisely because they could keep their city hidden—yet their light, the one thing they meant to preserve, had never gone out.
They hid for safety, not shame. And what the world couldn’t see, heaven never lost sight of.
In that moment, I thought of how often our faith journeys take us downward. We spend so much of life trying to climb higher—upward in success, upward in approval, upward into light. But there are times when God takes us down instead: down into humility, down into silence, down into places where we can’t see much at all. Down into the heart of things.
Faith, it turns out, doesn’t need altitude—it needs endurance.
Those Cappadocian believers may have lived underground, but their faith was rooted in eternity. They dug deep because they trusted that God could reach even deeper. Twenty-five stories of stone could not muffle the sound of worship that rose through the tunnels. Their songs were quiet, but they traveled upward like smoke through the vents of creation.
As I touched the cool stone wall, I thought about my own life—the moments when belief had to survive without sunlight. Every believer has their hidden seasons. We’ve all prayed from caves of uncertainty, whispered hope through the cracks of fear, waited for light to reach us again.
And yet, through all of it, God has never stopped breathing through the air shafts of grace.
Back on the surface, the sky felt blinding after the darkness below. The children ran ahead, their laughter echoing between the rocks. My wife and I lingered a moment longer by the entrance, looking out over the plateau. The land was dry and endless, a canvas of soft earth and rising stone. I thought of how those same hills once hid the people of God—and how those people, in turn, kept God’s light alive for the generations that would follow.
When we returned to Göreme, the late afternoon sun poured down in ribbons of gold. The fairy chimneys glowed as though lit from within. Pigeons wheeled overhead, and the scent of sage drifted through the air. I felt a deep peace settle over me—the kind that comes when you realize that history is holy, not because of kings or wars, but because of the ordinary people who kept believing in the dark.
That night, as the lamps flickered in our cave-room, I reread Jesus’ words in Matthew 5: “You are the light of the world.” It struck me that He didn’t say, You will be the light someday when everything is right. He said, You are. Here and now. Even twenty-five stories down. Even in the hidden places.
Sometimes the brightest faith is the kind nobody sees but God.
When I think of Cappadocia now, I see more than stone towers and ancient tunnels. I see a portrait of the gospel itself—the story of a Savior who descended into darkness so that light could rise again. Jesus went down before He came up. Down into suffering, down into death, down into the tomb—and on the third day, the light burst forth. The deepest descent became the highest dawn.
That’s what the Cappadocians lived. That’s what we still live.
They didn’t choose the depth, but they discovered God in it. They learned that when faith goes underground, grace goes with it. And when the time is right, grace brings us back into the light, stronger than before.
There’s something profoundly human about those underground cities. They remind me that faith is not fragile architecture; it’s endurance carved in stone. It doesn’t always shine from hilltops or pulpits—it often flickers quietly in hidden rooms, waiting for the world to grow quiet enough to notice.
When we left Cappadocia, we rose early to watch the sunrise. The valley below was covered in a soft mist, and one by one, hot air balloons began to lift into the sky. Their colors—scarlet, gold, and white—floated silently above the fairy chimneys, each balloon like a lantern released into the heavens. For a moment, it looked as though the whole land was exhaling light.
I stood there thinking how fitting it was—that after centuries of buried faith, the sky over Cappadocia now glowed with color and flight. The same air that once carried whispered hymns through the tunnels was now filled with balloons. It felt like God’s quiet smile over a land that had endured.
Faith, I realized, doesn’t stay buried. It rises. It always rises.
The Cappadocians carved their refuge twenty-five stories down so they could keep the gospel alive. And though centuries have passed, that same gospel still lifts us up, one breath of grace at a time.
When life presses us downward—through loss, disappointment, or fear—God is not absent. He’s in the descent with us. The dark is not the end of the story; it’s where resurrection begins.
> “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
I think about that verse every time I remember Cappadocia.
Sometimes I picture those hidden chapels, their ceilings still faintly marked with soot, and imagine a few believers gathered around a single lamp. One holds a child; another keeps watch near the doorway. They pray quietly, hearts steady. The empire above them may not know their names, but heaven does.
And I imagine the Father looking down, not through the distance of stars but through the very rock itself, whispering: I see you. Keep shining.
When I close my eyes, I can still feel the cool air of those tunnels, the scent of dust and candle wax, the hush of ancient faith that refuses to die. I can still hear the echo of the children’s laughter as we came back to the surface, sunlight flooding our eyes. And I can still hear that whisper of grace, the one that seems to follow you long after you leave a holy place: You can’t keep light buried forever.
We carried that memory home with us—the quiet courage of people who worshiped in the dark, the reminder that even hidden faith changes the world.
So when the days grow heavy, and hope feels small, I remember Cappadocia. I remember the mountain that held us safe, the city that survived by staying hidden, the believers who found light twenty-five stories down.
And I remember this: faith isn’t measured by how high it climbs, but by how deep it trusts.
Even when the path descends, God is there.
Even when the world grows silent, the Spirit still breathes.
Even when all you can see is stone, grace is rising through the cracks.
Because the light that filled those caves so long ago still shines.
And it shines in you.
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Grace Rises
Lord, thank You for the faith that endures beneath the surface.
For those who once sang in stone chapels twenty-five stories down,
and for every heart that still carries Your light through the shadows.
When life feels buried, remind us that Your grace always finds a way to rise.
Let our homes, our words, and our days
become small reflections of that city that cannot be hidden.
And when the sun rises over our valleys,
may the world see—not us—but You,
the Light that still shines through every rock and every heart.
Amen.
