At sixteen, seventeen, eighteen I journeyed home from Wisconsin where I worked and went to school. I was eager with anticipation to see my brother, my sister, my niece, my parents, my cousins, and a plethora of other family. I didn’t always arrive by Christmas day, but I always seemed to make it home.
A few years later I was married and trying to navigate the holidays with two families. Divided hearts longing for their own sense of home. I didn’t understand his and he didn’t understand mine. But we went anyway because our hearts called us to do so. There have been very few years that I didn’t get home for Christmas. I would be able to count them on one hand. And as I wrestle with not going this year, my heart is feeling that same tug toward home.
I think of those for whom “home” was not a loving place. You still feel it. That yearning to be in a place where, even for just a moment, all is right with the world. A place where love is wrapped around you like a warm blanket. It may not be found in the house where you grew up, but you seek it still. And this time of year makes the pangs just a little stronger.
I think of Mary and Joseph so many years ago. I wonder if they too longed for home. As if giving birth in a stable in the middle of the night wasn’t bad enough, I am sure they would have loved to spend that special night with family and friends around a cozy fire. I can almost imagine the ache in Mary’s heart. Or perhaps that night in Bethlehem is where the longing started for all of us. I wonder if the cry of that tiny little baby all of a sudden made everything seem like home. He was the long-awaited one. When His lungs filled with air the whole earth could finally take a deep breath. The Messiah was here. The Redeemer had come and made Himself at home in the most lowly of places. “Be it ever so humble…”
Perhaps what we are longing for is not a place, but rather a person. The angels are beckoning us to come. They sang it to the shepherds. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” And on earth – PEACE. There it is. We are weary and heavy-laden. We come to the end of the year and we long for what we have not found in a year’s worth of labor. The longing is for the void in our heart to be filled with His presence…His peace.
I am grateful for this moment to take it in. God SO loved us that He sent His son from Heaven to come and make His home with us here. To bring us all the love and peace and safety and goodness the Father has to offer. If we will stop and drink it deeply, we will feel it in our very core. He wraps HIS loving arms around us and we are home.
May you find Him at the center of your longing in this season.