At this time of year as people travel many miles to be with their loved ones, the innate desire of the human heart to go ‘home’ is compelling. To return to a place of acceptance, compassion, hope and joy, where you can breathe deeply and know happiness.
For many, the idea of ‘home’ is more difficult, and may even bring painful memories and emotions. Home was a place of suffering, of brokenness and of pain; a place to avoid and an emotion to suppress.
This Christmas, Christ offers us a home to return to where He dwells as the peace-bringer and the life-giver. It’s a place that, although we talk in terms of returning to, is actually somewhere that by definition we have never and can never leave. This Christmas, Christ invites us to join Him in the only true home we have, the home that exists deep inside every one of us, our heart. In truth we cannot ever GO home – we ARE home.
Whatever house you find yourself in this Christmas Day, and whoever’s company you enjoy, know that the home you seek and the sanctuary you have eternally sought has never been somewhere other than where you are. And where you are there is a stable, poor and lowly yet perfectly fitted as a place for Christ to be born and the miracle of the Christmas story to be replayed. Today there is tinsel on the tree and food on the table, but more importantly, for those who have the eyes to see it, there is a nativity happeneing in your heart right now as Christ is born anew in every person that will receive Him. Truly the carol says, “Where meek souls will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in.”
May your Christmas be full of hope, filled with peace and overflowing with laughter.
Tom & Jo xx