It doesn't make economic sense

I've been putting off writing here, because I had too many unformed ideas competing for air time. Plus, this week I've had meetings every day, a lot more than I usually do. I've also discovered over the years that meetings mess with my ability to process my thoughts into written words. In any case, I'm here now, and determined to get something coherent written before the end of Friday.

Last week I listened to an episode from my favourite podcast: Undeceptions. The topic was close to my heart: Dis/ability. There was lots to chew on, including different theological ideas about what heaven will be like, whether the disabilities that people experience here on earth will have any part of that or not.

One of my favourite earrings. It's
a shard of pottery, created by a
group called Nozomi Project who 
began after the giant triple
disaster in Japan in 2011. They
made jewellery out of broken
pottery, initially from what was
washed up on the shoreline after
the tsunami. Their tagline was
"Beauty in brokenness", a 
beautiful way to think about the
brokenness that disability brings to 
people's lives.

As one who has worked as an allied health worker, I was thinking about this topic from well before I encountered disability as a parent. As an Occupational Therapy student we were trained to think about people holistically, to consider their whole lives and probably more than most professions in the field, to think deeply on what someone could do as opposed to what they couldn't do.

And then we had kids and got neurodivergent diagnoses which gave us another perspective on this whole topic, especially as our kids moved into post-school years.

I'm not about to rehash what was covered in this hour-long podcast, but wanted mostly to mention something that particularly jumped out at me. The host, John Dickson, interviewed Kirk Patston, the Director of the Centre for Preaching and Pastoral Ministry and a lecturer in Old Testament and practical theology at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. He's got lived experience as the parent of an adult son with a disability as well as professional experience as a former speech pathologist.

He and his wife were working in four churches when their son, Jerrah, was born. Kirk talked about the mentality of someone in Christian ministry where there is always a feeling that there's more you can do and a sense that you can always do better. This really resonates with me. It's a strange mix of our worth is based on how much we do, yet our faith is about God's grace, which has nothing at all to do with how much we do. They weren't getting much sleep because their son was having seizures and not sleeping and they both ended up having to "live off government payments and people's kindness for a year." It was very different to the church work they had been doing, and this of course meant they thought about who they were, what did God really want from them. See the full transcript at the end of this post.

Kirk said, "It doesn't make economic sense". Indeed, the whole field of disability can make you step back and think about human value. If our value is based only on economic output, then disability really challenges that. So does caregiving of little children and elderly people. (Cross-cultural mission also doesn't make economic sense, but I digress.) Kirk also said, though, that "that's not to say that the Lord's not in it, and that God might actually be doing something deep and important here."

I think this is an important point to think on: that even if it doesn't make sense from an efficiency point of view, it's not the only perspective. God has a different view on our lives and we need to trust him that he's got a purpose in the situations we find ourselves in, even if we don't understand it now.

A portion of the transcript of the podcast:

 John Dickson:

How has Jerrah, over the years, helped you think through, maybe not at the highest philosophical and theological level, just approach our topic that I wanna talk to you about of, of disability? Have you found that this experience, this lived experience has actually had a big influence, or did it just simply turn your mind to the topic, as it were?

Kirk Patston:

Oh, no. Big, a big influence. Kind of an undoing of me, really. Yeah. Um, I think I had a framework about Christianity, which I, I knew intellectually I was always had to work against, that, um, what God really wants from me is, you know, lots of service of other people, lots of activity.

A very kind of activist, uh, account of Christianity. So, my wife and I have… We’ve got theological training and have worked in church ministry, and you’re always feeling that there’s more I can do. There’s more people I could talk to about Jesus. There’s m- you know, there’s better pastoral care I could offer, more, you know, there’s how can we grow things?

So you’ve got that kind of story where you’re, you’re productivity based. Sure. Um, and, and but with paradoxically at the same time knowing that the Christian message is actually about God’s grace- Yeah … where, you know, we don’t earn and where we’re actually unable to- Mm-hmm … perform. So it’s, it’s sort of weird.

Like, there’s this clash in it, and oftentimes I would identify and know that clash. But then along comes Jarrah, and, um, he came along in a period in our life when Lisa and I had four churches to look after that were all struggling. Um, but one or two of them in particular were just sort of going through a time of change.

New people were coming. There was this sense of, aha, these churches that were dying are not going to die. God’s going to do something. And then along came Jarrah with these uncontrolled seizures, and, he didn’t sleep. He’d just sleep in 40-minute little snatches. So we just… Our life was so chaotic, we just got to the point we just had to walk away from our ministry roles.

We just lived off government payments and people’s kindness for a year. And, um, so then you think, oh, who am I? You know, who am I as a Christian? Mm. What does God want from me? And you begin to see the dignity of, and the, the wasteful dignity of I’m going to care for one little person with epilepsy, rather than four churches.

Yeah. Um, and it do- doesn’t make economic sense. It’s not efficient. Mm. But that’s not to say that the Lord’s not in it, and that God might be actually doing something deep and important here.

(This is a transcript with this note: Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. I've removed some small errors, but I haven't checked the audio before quoting it here.)

Satisfaction in completing a project

Cover of our latest magazine, to be
mailed out next week.

On Tuesday we sent another magazine to the printer. Each of these issues is the culmination of about four and a half months of work of our team, so it's worth noting when each issue is finished. However, the magazine team is remote, so remote that five of them are currently living in Australia and the US. Different time zones and that we all hold many different responsibilities outside of the magazine combine to make it hard to do much at the same time at all. I don't even try for frequent all-team meetings.

A friend asked me on Sunday if I celebrate at these times, when we finish a magazine. My answer was "No, not generally." But when I thought about it later, I realised that if the weather is good, I'll often go for a ride to my favourite local park in the days following the completion of an issue. But this time of year it's hard as it's still pretty hot and humid. However my friend's kind question prompted me to take a moment...and so on Tuesday I rode to my favourite local coffee shop and enjoyed the treat of someone else making me a good coffee.

On Tuesday I also started writing our prayer letter, which, alongside this blog, is one of my favourite ways to reflect on recent events, as well as look forward to the coming weeks. Through doing that I realised that my Saturday mornings are extra busy in September (usually David and I try keep Saturdays free for relaxation and home-stuff). On top of that we've got a lot going on in October (three work trips between the two of us plus a camping trip and a one-day mission conference to speak at). Phew! 

I realise that you don't really want me to list all the various tasks I've got on my mind at work (though it helped me to list them anyway, but I deleted them before I hit "Publish"). Most of it is planning and preparing for future events or projects in the coming months. It all feels quite messy. In contrast, our magazine process has become quite organised and clear, and it's very satisfying to finish one and hold it in my hand. So I do often find it a bit of a challenging transition from the intensity of finishing off a magazine back to other (often less clear-cut) responsibilities.

In other news on the self-care front—I did go to the dentist today, and got the all clear for another few months. And I'm continuing the struggle with cooking too much food for us two...but enjoying the leftovers on subsequent evenings!

Amazing true story I got to write

Every now and then I take on a short-term publishing project. Last year one of my colleagues asked if I'd be willing to write up the true story of an amazing provision to our mission in the 1990s. It's an exciting story that many who've been around OMF Japan for a while knew little bits of, but almost no one knew the whole story. I thought—This can't be too hard.

After I accepted the challenge I discovered I was wrong about how easy it would be to write, but it was satisfying to do. I was given portions of the story that had been written by different people and two recordings of one person's recollections of events. It was a complex story with many threads and people—one of which went back to before WW2 in New Zealand. Reconciling all the details was really challenging. My brief was to write it so it fitted on two A4 sheets of paper and could be understood by anyone with no prior knowledge of the story, Japan, or OMF. It was hard to pull together the multiple threads to write a coherent story that was so short.

The story is about how, in the 1990s, OMF Japan ended up owning a tract of land near a major train station in one of the most expensive metropolises in the world at that time. OMF was able to build our national headquarters on it as well as a mission guest home. Both of these buildings are still heavily used each week and are key parts of our ministry in this country.

The goal was to have a copy of this story in each of the guest rooms so that anyone who stays or works there can know of God's amazing provision of this fantastic facility.

This week I uploaded the story to our website and you can read it there: https://omf.org/how-omf-japan-came-to-own-the-land-its-headquarters-are-built-on/

Take a look and see how complex a story it is! But at the same time, how amazing it is! I'm so glad we have been able to get this written down so that it won't be forgotten.

This project gave me a lot of respect for people who write lengthy biographies and histories. Their capacity for research and holding a lot of data in their heads, then writing it all down coherently is amazing!

Processing our weeks in Australia

My husband and I have both found ourselves continuing to process our weeks in Australia, but especially the last three crazy weeks of speaking and travelling. It's processing that's happening in the quiet moments between other things . . . and in our subconsciousness (i.e. dreams...last night I struggled to pack for a return journey from somewhere and had lost luggage and a lost toothbrush).

Since we returned to Japan life has been pretty busy, yet fairly routine, especially after David started back at school and I got back into my routine editing work. So we've now got the mental space to do the processing needed.

Yesterday I enjoyed an afternoon puttering 
around our local area: the city we've lived
since 2010. I volunteered at school, did a 
little bit of grocery shopping, and met a long-
time Japanese friend. This photo is of the 
front of the school. The gym is currently having
a maintenance facelift, hence all the scaffolding.

The other day I watched an interview of a good friend/author. Part of his story is that he was medically discharged from the military, but not due to physical injury. This I knew, but it was interesting to hear him (with a bit of space since it happened) tell about the process and the advice given to him at the time. One of the things he was advised to do was to minimise chaos in his life, to seek out something of a boring life!

That struck me in terms of my own life. Missionary life can be full of not-boring stuff and plenty of chaos, especially at transition times. The challenge of living (even thriving) in another country is often not boring. Certainly there's plenty of stress involved at times. The temptation that many of us deal with is to fill your schedule with so many things to keep things interesting and make you feel like you're achieving stuff that you can report in your regular letters to supporters. 

And then there's the strange thing called home assignment. That's full of decisions, upheaval, and adrenaline-filled periods.

Overall, I'm grateful to be back into my relatively boring daily life here in Japan. I'm thriving with the household tasks of simple menu planning, grocery shopping, and making our own food. (Not that I didn't appreciate others cooking for us for much of our time in Australia.) I love being back on a regular daily and weekly schedule that we've been working with over the last couple of years. Though I do need to get some vacuuming done soon!

So what is there to learn? I think that for us, we need more margin during home assignment than we need in our daily lives in Japan. To us that looks and feels like laziness, it's uncomfortable as we're generally conscientious people who work hard at the things we're given to do.

And then there's always the deadly comparison. It's easy to look at what other missionaries do, and think that we should be doing the same. In mission circles everyone's heard the crazy stories that people tell about home assignments: "Yeah, we spoke at 52 churches in 20 weeks, never staying in the same place for longer than a couple of days, often doing two or three services each Sunday..." I exaggerate, but it's no lie that some people do incredible feats of travel and speaking when they're visiting supporters. I think that it's become pretty clear to us that David and Wendy Marshall aren't among their number.

When I find myself working with a lack of sufficient margin I need to remind myself that I don't need to perform to any audience. I don't get extra points from anyone for being super busy. What I mostly get is physical signs that I'm too busy and stress. And, I need to let go of caring so much about what others think of me. The only one whose opinion matters is God...and I can't do anything that will make him love me less (or more). I'm saved by grace alone.

We're back in Tokyo

This morning it's a week since we landed back in Tokyo. The last week has been a bit of a blur, however. We came back very tired and my health hasn't been superb. But all that is improving as we settle back into life here. We're very happy to be back in our own little apartment and slipping back into routines. It was wonderful to be welcomed back to our church in Tokyo and feel like we'd come home. While time with family and friends in Australia has been good, there is a joy in being known here too, in our other home.

Yesterday I drove to my friend's house in a nearby city to pick up my 16 potted plants! My Japanese friend has quite a green thumb and she's done a great job of looking after them. It's challenging, though, to take care of plants in pots in the midst of a Tokyo summer. Extreme heat with lots of sunshine stresses most of them. Our apartment is very bright, which is wonderful in winter, but finding places to put plants in the summer is a bit challenging (our tiny balcony and bay window are on the south side, and very hot). My office is on the north side of the building and gets little direct sun at any time of the year, so I haven't usually put plants in here, but have four of them in with me just now...and I really like them!

I also got a haircut on my way home from my friend's house. The hairdresser was pretty nervous about cutting my hair so short. Not many Japanese women have their hair as short as mine, so getting a haircut can be a challenge. (I now have a video I show them of myself with freshly cut short hair that makes them much more comfortable.) This salon is so much cheaper than anything I could get in Australia (about AUD11) so I persevered and managed to get away without getting it cut through our whole time in Australia, but it was getting very shaggy and feels much better now it's been trimmed.

I've been working on our August newsletter. It's been a couple of months since we wrote to people and a lot has happened. Actually, when I started work on it on Saturday, I found reviewing what we'd done in Australia quite stressful! It's good to look back and debrief a bit, though, because we'll have to decide what to do next time we need to take a home assignment (which, if we keep doing this every two years, will come much faster than we want it to).

David's already back at school too, and loving it. He really does love his job and this school, which makes me happy too.

But now I must get back to other urgent matters that have been waiting...especially the Autumn issue of the magazine I'm the managing editor of—our busyness and then travel and post-arrival recovery time has slowed up the whole process.

Finishing off our home assignment in Perth

I'm dropping in here quickly from Western Australia. We've been very busy since we got back from holidays just over two weeks ago. In Queensland we spoke at a church and two Bible/theological colleges before flying to Perth (five and a half hours) last Friday. In Perth on Sunday we spoke at two churches. This coming weekend we've got four more speaking opportunities before we fly to Tokyo on Monday.

In between all these up-front opportunities we've been meeting various people over meals, in fact we're out every night this week except one. It's been a lot and my body is protesting. It's been very encouraging, but also very tiring, despite getting good food and sleep and even some exercise (we've walked nearly 30,000 steps in the last three days). Unlike some missionaries on home assignment, we've only slept in six different beds over the last 11 weeks, and one of those was for a total of about seven weeks (in three segments). That's definitely worth being thankful for! But nonetheless, we're longing to be home in our little apartment, and back into our own routines.

It's also been a lot easier doing this HA without any children or teens under our care. We've spent time with them in the last 11 weeks, but then they went back to their own lives (in their own cars to their own homes). Juggling the care of kids while doing speaking on home assignment was the norm for us many years and it's really nice to put that behind us now.

One thing we've continued to do, though, is try to appreciate the localities that we have passed through. This week we've been enjoying Perth. We've been to Kings Park and walked along the nearby stunning rivers (Canning and Swan). Our hosts even took us to Fremantle to enjoy fish and chips (but it was at night, so we saw little of this historic city). Here are some photos from our recent outings:

Canning River and a Coral Tree.

Perth and the Swan River from Kings Park

Fraser Ave in Kings Park

False Sarsparilla or Native lilac (Australian native)

More Swan River

Pink (or Hill) gum, viewed from the Federation Walkway

A portion of the elevated walkway

Queensland Boab tree

Ornamental pincushion (native to southern Africa)

The above sign describes the below flower—an astoundingly large flower on a gum tree.

Close up of the Coral Tree flower

Another gum tree in silhouette. 

The soil here is very sandy, hence river-side beaches aren't uncommon.

Can you see the Black Swans, the birds the river is named after?

Our mid-home assignment holiday

We're fresh back from holidays. So much happened during our time away that I want to take some time to write it down and process it a little here. But I'll also share some beautiful Queensland scenery that we saw!

Two and a half weeks ago, on Saturday Jun 27th, we drove to what Australians call the Sunshine Coast. It's the coastal area north of Brisbane (as opposed to the Gold Coast, which is south). This part of Queensland includes several cities and towns and about 60 km of coastline. It's one of the holiday "playgrounds" of southern Queensland. My family took a number of holidays there when I was a child. 

We spent the weekend meeting people and speaking at a supporting church, which was both busy and very encouraging. 

Wurtula Beach on Sunshine Coast

But, from the Monday we were on holidays, free of obligations and deliberately took a break from email and social media and staying up-to-date with stuff. We were thankful for a free housesitting opportunity close to the beach for a week. Though we didn't swim, we walked along the beach several times. We even got to collect and eat fresh eggs from the house chooks. I came down with a cold during this week and was thankful for time to rest.

Our youngest son and a friend also joined us there for 24 hours. We had fun hanging out and playing games. It was fun to cook for them too.

Urban chooks...who were a bit more fussy than the 
country chooks we've met.

Nice walkway just inland from the beach where we were staying.

Moss on Wurtulla Beach

The Peanut Van was a flash back to my two years living in Kingaroy in the
Burnett region of Queensland. We were thrilled to find they sold nuts other than peanuts.

I hadn't thrown off the cold before we had to vacate that lovely house and drive north for about seven hours, but, suitably medicated, I coped with the drive. Waiting for us in Central Queensland was David's family. We caught up with both his siblings, their spouses, and most of his nephews and nieces. 

We parked my parents' motorhome (our transport and often our bed for these 2 ½ weeks) outside my mother-in-law's house and slept there for our stay, keeping her guest rooms free for our eldest son and his family, who drove down from North Queensland to meet us. They also got to meet most of David's immediate family. It was the first time for almost any of them to meet our daughter-in-law and granddaughter. Another first was all of David's siblings with their spouses (and David's mum) to get together for a meal without any kids!

The "Singing Ship" of Emu Park. An installation that "sings" with the wind.
It commemorates the discovery and naming of Keppel Bay by Captain Cook
in 1770.

Locals know this as "Causeway", it's south of Yeppoon. I discovered this is a place of nostalgia for David's siblings who spent their childhood in this area. The Causeway Lake is a tidal estuary that was created in the 1930s by building a bridge and road link across the mouth of a creek. It's a popular recreation area. We had lunch here one day with family.

On the road again. It's been 2 ½ years since we spent two months in this
motorhome, but it felt very familiar when we hopped in here again.

It was several days of a lot of family—especially a lot for these two expats who usually live on the other side of the ocean to family! But it was worthwhile to take the time to reconnect with family, because at the end of the day, regardless of everything else, we're related to them all.

We did get four precious days with our granddaughter, who, at seven months old, was very different to when we last met her as a newborn. She was full of smiles (and frowns, and very much knew the difference between her parents and everyone else). We ate and played, explored and rested. My daughter-in-law and I took over my mother-in-law's kitchen for a time preparing food for our mob.

But, then we also had to say goodbye to them all. Maybe my heart has grown tough? I didn't find it as difficult as you might think I would. I guess we've accepted (long ago) that we don't live close to family and therefore don't have the same expectations of our relationships with them? 

In some ways it was a relief to head off on our own for the next six days and have some very slow days. We were tired and a bit over-peopled, and also noting that we've been living in other people's homes (very nice and generous people!) and away from our own little apartment since mid-May. 

We split the journey south in two, driving about four hours on the Thursday to Lake Monduran (west of Bundaberg) and the Saturday to Lake Somerset (south of Kilcoy). And then, on Tuesday this week we drove two hours to return the motorhome to my parents and a bit over an hour back to our hosts in Ipswich. A fair bit of driving, but in many ways that's part of our Australian DNA as "country kids". Driving country roads just feels normal to us and something we have to do to visit family. Also, having spent two months driving through four states and territories in that same motorhome back in 2024, we felt very much at home on the road in it.

We indulged in some free Mini Golf at one of the campsites.

Our second campsite (Lake Somerset) had many kangaroos, especially 
after the school holiday crowds left. It's fun seeing them
lounging around, free to come and go and not in a zoo!

Sunset cast a beautiful glow on the lake and surrounds.

We enjoyed a roast dinner one night in the motorhome. I quite enjoy
cooking in its tiny, but well-equipped kitchen. We didn't actually roast
the chicken in the van, we bought it already cooked, but the motorhome 
has an oven, so I could have roasted a chook myself if I'd desired to. The
vegetables were all cooked on the gas stovetop.

One of our delights is finding an Aussie burger (including beetroot) at a country shop.
These were bought on our journey between campsites, at Ban Ban Springs.

The first campsite. Most of the people at this site were fishermen.

Sunset over Lake Monduran.

There were signs at the Lake Monduran campsite advertising this as a
walking track, but we found it fairly dissatisfying. Very high grass and a washed out
bridge (below) that didn't allow us to complete the full walk.

Also Lake Monduran (and below).

Our time on our own at those two lakes comprised of reading, solving various puzzles in two puzzle magazines bought for the purpose, walking around the local area, doing laundry, cooking, and generally just resting and re-setting prior to the push of the last three weeks of deputation we have to do before flying back to Japan.

Looking back at our time away we are so thankful for time with various family members, including each of our sons individually. A friend pointed out one interesting theme: that we played board games with each of our sons during our time away (either in person or online!

For some time we have been discussing what home assignment would look like for us after all our kids left home. One of the key decision points to doing any home assignment is what to do about the responsibilities that you hold in your country of service. As a school teacher, it isn't easy to take random lengths of time off to do a home assignment. Most teachers would do it during their summer break. Otherwise it means taking six months or a year off as anything else is difficult for a school to manage. But home assignment is work, so taking all of that holiday time to work isn't the wisest course. Therefore one "big rock" that we had to plan for this shorter home assignment was holiday time, because we need to get back to Japan refreshed, not ready for a break as we'll both be jumping back into work within a couple of days of landing there. Having this break part-way through our 11 weeks in Australia was hopefully a good choice. 

A friend asked me the other day if we'll do this style of home assignment the same next time. I said we'll finish this one and let the dust settle before we evaluate it. So, stay tuned! (Might I say it also depends on what we're allowed to do, we had to get approval from a number of different people in order to pull this one off.)

Anyway, that's enough reflecting for one blog post. If you've read this far then I'm impressed as I've written for myself as much as anyone!

Many opportunities

The home assignment sprint continues, more like a 400m than a 100m! 

Despite the busyness, so far we've had many wonderful opportunities to talk to a variety of people. Last Saturday we spent several hours meeting people at a church hall, people who hadn't been able to catch us anywhere else. This "open house" style of meeting is an efficient way of catching up with folk when we have limited time to make individual appointments.

I've had two different team meetings this week with colleagues in Japan. I'm thankful the time difference is only one hour! But each of these meetings have jerked my head around: I'm both in Australia and in Japan and it's a bit challenging. Certainly I wouldn't encourage newer missionaries to attempt such continuity of Japan-based ministry while on home assignment!

We've also been attending to medical needs: skin cancer checks and mission medicals and the action points from those (including an iron infusion for myself), women's health screening, etc.

We've cooked two Japanese meals this week for each of our younger two sons (and others), and spent extra time with them. I forgot to take a photo of the chocolate cheesecake I made them :D I'm treasuring these times with them.

As a result, this week there has been less opportunity to rest, and that's probably why we've been feeling more ragged heading into another full weekend.

I really want to write more here...but I'm almost out of time and energy this week. 

We've got a whirlwind of things on in the next four days. These are some of the things going on:

• Three public speaking opportunities (which need Powerpoints and scripts finalised).
• 300+ km of driving over two days.
• Meeting up with two different couples over coffee and then a meal on Saturday.
• An online meeting with Japan-based colleagues for David.
• Planning and shopping for our own food (not something we've had to do in the last five weeks as we've stayed with people who've provided most of our meals).
• Packing up, then unpacking into my parents' motorhome (our mode of transport and accommodation some nights in the coming 2 ½ weeks).
• Answering some emails and finishing up a few Japan-ministry bits and pieces before we go on holidays from Monday.

We're tired and hankering after that holiday—just have to get through these final days before we get there!

Our holiday will include time on our own as well as time with family, including four nights with our granddaughter and her parents.

Please pray for God's strength and grace in these coming days!

Time to rest (and move)

One of the biggest challenges of a short, fast-paced home assignment is getting rest. We've designated each Monday as a day off and have that written on our online shared calendar. It's important to decide that beforehand otherwise a dangerous "creep" can happen and you end up with not enough time to truly rest. Also, we're trying to have a mentality that downtime can happen at other times too. This week we have meetings on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. It'll be wise to have rest time during the day on those days (and probably Friday morning too...after an evening event I often don't sleep well).

Yesterday (Monday), on our designated day off, we went a little further afield for a longer walk. White Rock Conservation Park is not far from our home church in Redbank Plains, Ipswich. We've lived around this area several times in the last 15 years and yet never gone to the park, though I've heard it mentioned many times by people. Yesterday we had good weather, plus the time and energy to go and explore it. We ended up walking seven kilometres through typical Queensland bushland. It was a delightful outing that was good for us on many fronts.

There were so many gorgeous trees, mostly a typical Queensland eucalyptus forest.

The "rock" itself is a sandstone outcrop. We walked from the carpark in to the rock and out again.

We saw a number of kangaroos, but none so close as these two who calmly grazed on grass as we walked within a few metres of them.

When we were almost back to our car we passed this kookaburra. He was perched at head height, only a metre or so off the track and also didn't move as we walked past, pausing to take his photo.

Pondering our uncommon "walking around life"

Before we went on home assignment in 2023 I was reading a book called Uncommon Ground, a collection of essays brought together by Tim Keller and John Inazu with perspectives from people thinking deeply and working daily to live with these times. Here are some of my reflections on that in light of our upcoming time in Australia:

Home assignment means meeting
up with people for various reasons.
On Saturday we met up with a 
member of our church in Tokyo,
someone we'd never met before.
We got to walk for the first time on
this cool bridge across the Brisbane
river.

In the case of a missionary on home assignment, we have to "translate" overseas mission and Japan to Australians. In general people we encounter there don't clearly understand what we do or where we do it. If you've followed my blog for a long time, you'll know that our work in Australia is composed of answering a lot of questions.

Much patience and diligence is required in translation. Much attention to detail as well as sensitivity to the wider picture. My work as an editor is also translation to some degree. I have to ensure that the writer's intent is accurately and appealingly translated into words that the audience will understand and not stumble over. And of course, as a writer who writes about cross-cultural life, I am translating my experience, life in Japan, and missionary life, into words so that others can understand. Pretty similar, in a way, to what we do on HA, except that as a writer and editor, I can hide behind my screen, rather than have to engage people face to face, or stand up in front of an audience with no time to edit my answers. (from here)

In the midst of another home assignment, one that is far more fast paced, the thoughts about still resonates with me. I'd definitely rather be working behind the scenes, but alas, God has given us this thing to do and we're getting on with doing it.

These last few weeks, when I have some free time and energy, I've been gradually making my way through A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene H. Peterson, the author of the Bible paraphrase: The Message. A Long Obedience. It is a book that I heard about early in our time in Japan but have only now gotten my hands on a copy. I didn't realise that it was a book on discipleship based on the Songs of Ascent, Psalms 120–134. It's a good read!

The chapter I read on Tuesday was based on Psalm 123 and in it Peterson connects it with Romans 12:1–2:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (The Message)

Below is how I more commonly recognise this passage: 

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:1-2 NIV).

The Message version of the passage stands out to me because the intro that I'm giving to our formal presentations includes a series of statements about what our ordinary lives in Japan looks like. Our "walking around life". We tend to think of service to God as the extraordinary stuff, not the stuff of ordinary life. As we talk from the front of churches and other gatherings I'm deliberately framing our stories as being from the place where God has set us down. (From the quote that Alistair Begg uses from his mentor Eric Alexander: "There's no ideal place to serve God, except the place he sets you down.")

And of course the other thing that stands out is the observation about culture. As we move between our two "home" cultures, we see things that people who are immersed in them don't necessarily see so clearly. It doesn't make us experts in either culture, but it does give us a unique perspective. Perhaps not fitting so well into either culture is an advantage, helping us to focus our attention on God as Paul instructs us to do?

I'll continue to ponder this and other thoughts in this book while I go about my "walking around life", which, this afternoon includes the joy of hanging out in an Australian library :-) and even borrowing some physical books!