I'm back...trying to find a way to stay home.
Y'all thought I'd kicked the habit...or died in China...or'd been taken out by their government. NOpe! I'm safely home...arrived in Portland 5:20pm Sunday evening...seven new stamps in my haggard passport. They (customs officials) kept thinking I was moving drugs out of asia! I guess it was the dreads on my head in my passport photo that had then worried...anyway after being padded down numerous times and sent to line A instead of waved through just as many...I have safely cleared...and cleanly cleared for any of you out there wondering!

Fresh off an intense week of traveling throughout backwards and previously closed parts of China. What an amazing exposure to life there. And the church! The church (legal) is thriving...sharp leaders are leading and training and releasing young leaders...the church is really exploding...filled with good problems...not enough registered churches...not enough pastors...not enough training centers...all good problems for a place where God is releasing big waves of the kingdom. I return with incredible insights of the true status of the church in China and not only that but an understanding of the general movement of the nation out of communism and into "controlled" captolism.

It was amazing to me to oberve the ways in which western "pop" culture is being imported in such heavy doses. The most strategic praying we can do for the church there is that the leaders will recognize what is happening to their young people and give new shape to their very formal and reproducialbe church "services." With out this movement many young people will be captured by western culture and overtaken and unable to see the relevance of an ancient traditional service...hmm this is sounding similiar to a conversation I have already been having here at home? Go figure...what does global culture mean? global!

So what's going on with me? Well, I've been drawn warmly to the prodigal son narrative as told by LUke in the gospels. I find my heart longing to identify and probe and eat of its true meaning for me...I realize suddenly how often I am running off to distant places to waste the things God has given me on myself. It's so easy to run...I fear I know little about what it means to "be at home" to "live at home" with a FAther who celebrates me...I don't know what that means...my heart is cold like a friend has recently said...and life is screaming past me...its all moving too quick...my heart races my head pounds, and fear shakes the life from my bones...I am not at home, I am lost in some kind of "wild living" even if it mainly is taking place in my heart. Yet I long for home. I believe it's a place that is real. I know it exists so I will set my inner course to pursue it...and to find it.

- posted by Jacob B. @ 10:10 AM