home :: handwritten (Feb. 9, 2007)

(February 27th, 2007)

Home.

No turning back.

These are thoughts I have been musing over for a few days now. Christ says, “This world is not your home.” I feel taht to be more true with each passing hour. I feel I have adapted to quickly, once again, to such a foreign environment. As I walk the streets of Bangalore, Chennai and even Hyderabad, I find myself moving with the flow of their culture. I don’t think of home, whether that be Kansas or California or even the states. I’m here. In India, asking the same questions on this journey as I did where they first became pressing.

After hearing that Lance is getting married, I began to praise God for the physical barrier of no turning back. It’s a perfect reminder to keep moving forward. It’s also an incredible blessing to be able to reflect and be confident that my experiences in the past six months would not have been possible had I not moved forward. If I knew when I left Wichita that he would end up married six months after I left, I would have still ran to the place I am now. I can’t imagine my life without L.A. and now I can’t imagine my life without India.

The concepts combined bring me to a contemplative place where I not only wonder if I’m wrong in the way I’m choosing to follow Christ (or if I’m following Him at all) but it also begs the question - are we to just BE humanities taste of their true home?

It’s like bringing heaven to earth, being a voice of hope and more realistically (or I suppose, theologically) being the church in its raw and pure form.

My questions still remain - how do people connect with a very real and personal and living God in this environment (India)? How do they see His physical manifestation in their lives? And if they do find Him, how do they begin to flesh out those new values? Through church as I know it or by being doers of the Word?

As I continue to ask questions and draw near to Him in the best way I know how, I have to believe that continued knowledge and understanding will accompany me on this journey. Today’s added knowledge that will propel me to my next moment -

My home is wherever humanity is begging for hope of something greater. And because of them, I will not turn back for the sake of sparing myself from being exposed to that which is painfully real.