We’ll probably be stopping in one of the Auto Bahn (motorway) resting places like the one where I took the picture above on Monday. Need to make sure all toilet business is settled before one goes because it’s minimum 50cents Euro per entry 🙂 phew!
Begining to feel and think about more and more of the “situation” I’ll be returning to in Malaysia. The ministries lined up, relationships to get “reconnected”, new developments too … it’s kind of a strange feeling … on one hand, really want to go home, on the other a little fearful and unsure of what to expect (even though getting some hints here and there).
We talked about a re-entering home country “culture shock” for long term missionaries overseas during one of our sessions in the first week. Hmmm … any “mini-culture shockss” on the way? Dr. Philip’s tip on “Learning by Puzzlement” is going to come in handy here.
One participant commented over lunch yesterday whether her people back home would recognize her when she returns (not physically but as a person), because there’s so much intensive learning and experiences we were thrown into.
Some may still be the same but others who have absorbed, reflected and seriously processed these experiences would undoubtly be different. Then again, all of us change in the course of our human history short term or long term. I realized being “aware” of this and the journey is already a tremendous help.
As for BLC, I’m glad that I could roughly observe from a distance the “happenings” there through emails and even some blog entries. I’m glad some have kept me updated. There were some concerns which I felt so far away to handle and often “hands tied” or more precisely “Body bound” because of distance. Especially when it comes to “knots” that need untying. That will need to wait until i return.
When one is in a situation like that, learning “patience” is forced upon you and learning to “trust” is critical. More and more I feel these are two values very much needed in our “impatient” world and “distrustful” atmosphere. Often, we expect these to be a given and “should be there” when actually there’s a lot of effort needed to start it, maintain it and even allow this “Patience” combined with “trust” environment to grow. Nothing is automatic.
Until we meet again ….
When you mentioned ‘wait until I return’, I was thinking of Aragorn… “Return of the Pastor” maybe?
About being very different people after a short-term thing like this, I think that’s how some of us from DNA felt after the 12 days last year. Granted, a SUFES camp is not the biggest thing in the world, but no doubt for most of us it was the most monumental Christian event we’d been to so far. Besides, for me, that’s where McLaren started 🙂
Speaking of an automatic world, that’s probably due to the ‘machine’ system that has so inured most of society. I suppose that’s one of the reason for the postmodern revolution. Glenn Lim would agree. But yeah, that’s probably one of the reasons why the gospel that can “solve everything if you accept Christ as… etc” no longer works.
wow, this is the disconnected feeling I have blogged about often, I love the challenge of new places, new faces and so on but at the same time I long for the security of my personal and church family.
God certainly uses these opportunities to broaden our minds considerably and when we get back we need to manage where and how we allow it to narrow again.
I for one am looking forward to the newly sprouted Sivin and what messages he will have for us….