LOST AND FOUND IN PERTH

I have spent many years moving from place to place, searching and finding. I thought I knew what “rest” felt like. But standing on South Bank, watching the Swan River hold up the Perth CBD like a mirror, I realized something: I was lost. Not geographically. I knew exactly where I was. I was lost in that liminal space, not quite home, not quite foreign.

Singapore taught me to move fast. Weekdays are efficiency, MRT timing, queue discipline. Weekends fill with church events.

Perth on Saturday? The roads breathe. People walk their dogs, sit on grass without checking their phones. It’s familiar. I’ve seen US suburbs, yet different. Perth is cleaner, quieter, more space to think. For the first time in decades of travel, a city felt “near yet so far.” I had never set foot in Australia before, yet my spirit recognized something: rest.

The night before, I read the last chapter of Genesis. I was trying to find the Gospel in each chapter. Jacob, on his deathbed in Egypt, making Joseph swear: “Bury me with my fathers” (Genesis 50:5). Joseph, dying in Egypt centuries later, making Israel swear: “God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here” (Genesis 50:25). Two men, both exiles, both powerful, both homesick. Their last request was not for more land in Egypt. It was for roots.

As Chinese, I think some of us understand this deeply. 落叶归根, fallen leaves return to the root. I saw this in China, they build ancestral halls, chase the urn home, and some tell their children, “Don’t forget where you came from.” Every culture has a version of this longing. The universal ache: “Where do I belong? Where can I finally rest?”

Perth, with its wide sky and unhurried Saturday, put that questions back in me. But the answer did not come from the city. It came from the Presence I felt walking beside me.

Our roots are not in a postcode, not Singapore, not Perth, not even the soil of our ancestors. Our true root is a Person. Jesus said, “I will be with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). And He promised more, a new heaven and a new earth, and He said, “Behold, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:1, 5).

That is the end of our exile. That is the place we will be carried back to, like Jacob and Joseph. Not Egypt, not just the land of their fathers but the Father’s house.

So, in this liminal stage, in between Perth and Singapore, in between weekday rush and Saturday stillness, in between the present and the future, I found rest. Not because the city was perfect. But because Christ was present. The same Christ who meets me at Kallang River, meets me on South Bank. The same Christ who tells Martha, you are anxious about many things, but one thing is needed (Luke 10:41), and He whispers it to this pastor too.

Rest is not found by arriving. Rest is found by abiding. Even in a city I had never seen, with my loved one’s hand in mine and God’s hand on me, I was already home.

落叶归根, we will return to our roots. And our Root is Jesus. Until that new heaven and new earth, He is enough. He is here. And that is rest.

Building His Missional Community,

Pastor Forest