Balik Kampung: Take a trip back home. Return to your home town. These ideas can also be captured in the idea of balik kampung:
- Return to your village.
- Reunion.
- Take a trip down memory lane.
Au and I spent a quiet weekend in August, visiting with Au’s family in Ipoh. I realized I had been coming here for 38 years. It felt special to return.
On Saturday morning, we headed towards our favorite weekend place – the Ipoh stadium- for breakfast and then pasar tani – a farmer’s market. I made sure to order my favorite drink – one I’ve not found anywhere else. Kopi leleh: hot, milky coffee poured over ice so that it “erupts” in a foaming volcano.
And as I walked toward Au and his family, I heard a busker singing to us and helping us experience the kampung spirit of the sleepy town of Ipoh.
At first, there was a deep sense of satisfaction: This is Home. I continued thinking about home. What was it about returning to Au’s city of birth that made it feel like home? I felt like I belonged.
I affirmed, “But it really isn’t home,” and in fact, for me, it never really was home.
Perhaps you’ve heard the saying, “You can’t go home again”.
You have changed. The place isn’t the same. It, too, has changed. The people there have changed.
But what is the essence of going home? What makes us long for home?
- Is it to go back to a place where you belonged? The place where you knew your place and you understood the expectations and were accepted?
- Is it to prove you aren’t the same? You’ve changed and you’ve grown?
- Is it to show off your “success?” Or that you’ve made something of yourself?
- Is it to return to a simpler life where the worries and cares of your adult years somehow become less important, less urgent?
In leaving home, we become aware that the world is bigger. When we leave, we realize (soon enough) that there is so much we don’t really know about how the bigger world works, thinks, and feels. And that can be very exciting, very scary, and very uncomfortable.
Who we are, who we thought we were, gets questioned. And we explore: who do we want to be? And the brave ones ask, “Do I like the new me I’m becoming?”
But in returning home, we ponder, “Do I like who I’ve become? What have I exchanged in the years away? Am I content with my life today? Are there things I want to change about my life, about my values, and how I spend my days?”
None of our family lives in New Jersey anymore.
- Where is home for us?
- Is it where our children live?
- Is it Singapore?
Where’s home for you? What makes home, home? Are you, like us, looking for the place where you are loved, treasured, safe, and known? This is Home by Switchfoot captures some of this longing.
Discover a place where you truly belong, guided by the love and grace of Christ. Join our journey:
Each one of these people of faith died not yet having in hand what was promised, but still believing. How did they do it? They saw it way off in the distance, waved their greeting, and accepted the fact that they were transients in this world. People who live this way make it plain that they are looking for their true home. If they were homesick for the old country, they could have gone back any time they wanted. But they were after a far better country than that…