I walked down a corridor in the Thai history museum I was visiting with my language class. The air conditioning made me shiver and I paused as a poster on the wall caught my eye.
“In 1907, King Rama V of Thailand traveled to Europe and kept a journal of his visit. He titled the book “Klai Baan,” which means “Far From Home.”
I read the title again, frowning.
I had learned that phrase in just the past week in school, and I cocked my head in realization that I understood what those words meant without a translation.
Far from home.
I understood what that meant too.
I stood in silence for a moment to consider a king - a long-dead stranger - who had deeply understood what it meant to be in a completely new world and had considered the experience important enough to write about it.
As I continued to walk through the museum, I realized that I was “klai baan” (far from home). But where was home? It wouldn’t completely be my home in the Midwest of the USA ever again. I was far from whatever was familiar and comfortable for me, if that could be considered “home.” I continued through the museum, and as I sat eating lunch with my classmates afterward, I grew increasingly nauseous. The room began to spin and my hands shook as I ate my food. I recognized the signs of heat exhaustion and I looked at my taxi app to see how long it would take for me to get home from the restaurant: over an hour in traffic.
In the huge city of Bangkok, I realized at that moment that I was “klai baan” in more ways than one.
I fought my way through the sickness for over an hour through traffic and a metro so full I could feel the sweat of 50 people in the air before me as my heart pounded in my throat. I stumbled home and spent the next two days curled in a ball on my bed, pleading with my body to be less dramatic when it came to the heat. During those two days, I began to reflect on the past five weeks in Bangkok.
The cheerful facade of women I had talked to in prostitution bars who were there to provide for their families.
The hopelessness in the eyes of the homeless woman crouched in the skyway.
The exhaustion on the face of my apartment’s security guard who sat watch in the heat all day and drove a taxi all night.
The rows and rows of designer stores in elaborate malls that sat just across the street from houses about to collapse.
The chatter of my language school classmates as they talked about boys and vacations and “Isn’t this life hard” while the tiny girl with holes in her clothes and wilted flowers in her hair cupped her small, tan hands together to wait for spare change and looked searingly at us as we climbed up to the metro while her brother lay in her mother’s lap beside her on the sidewalk. And we walk past with coins and iPhones jingling in our pockets because this is our life and that is theirs.
But why?
Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (Phillippians 3:20-21.)
He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away. (Revelation 21:4.)
We are so far from home. We are so far from where we are meant to be.
Until we reach home, until we “klap baan,” กลับบ้าน (return home,) what do we do?
Cup the hands of the homeless woman as I press a few coins into her hands and ask God to love her through this as I hold her soft fingers for a moment longer because most who pass her avoid contact with the dirt she’s accumulated sitting on the street.
Smile as I walk past the kids playing jump rope on my street and respond when they call out “What’s your name?” and practice their English.
Tell the fruit vendor that I want “mamuang nung luuk” (one mango) and grin incessantly when the sweet juices drip down my chin and I can’t believe what’s on my tongue because this must be what God meant for mangoes to taste like all along.
Sit at a table with new Thai friends and point to their plates and ask “phet may kha?” (is it spicy?) as my tongue licks my lips on fire and snot runs down my face while they just laugh and hand me a box of tissues as I melt my taste buds in good company.
Go into places with darkness and pain and despair knowing that darkness is as light to the One who made these people who haven’t found happiness and honor in the places they are looking. Knowing that just as He found us, He is looking for them.
Far from home ไกลบ้าน (klai baan). But while we are not yet home, we still have time to invite others to our Father’s house.
“Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many rooms; if that were not so, I would have told you, because I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I am coming again and will take you to Myself…”
Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going; how do we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me.” (John 14: 1-3, 5-6)