homesick at Christmas

 Christmas is a time when you get homesick - even when you're home. 

 ~Carol Nelson

As overseas missionaries, we did find ourselves homesick at Christmas, missing the special events of the season, missing our families and friends.  But being back in the US this year, it's pretty obvious that it's not just those who are far away from home who feel this Christmas homesickness.  Maybe every human feels a little nostalgia, a longing for what used to be, or for what never was; the ideal Christmases of our youth, or of our children's youth.

Maybe that longing echoes a greater homesickness that we share in common; not for a moment in time, or for a warm hearth, but for our eternal home.  A homesickness for glory, for our beautiful Savior, for the peace and sinless perfection of our REAL home.

Sometimes storm clouds block our view of Home. Tossed and flurried, eyes on the waves and the upheaval in life, whether it’s political strife, or negative attitudes, or more laundry on top of more appointments, or sickness, I forget about HOME and about seeing Jesus, and about the cross that paved our way there. But HOME is no less real because of the distractions.

And the One Who slept in the manger in Bethlehem, who spoke peace to the waves, who hung on that cross and lives again is preparing a place there for us. One of these days we’ll be going Home.

"In My Father's house are many dwelling places;

 if it were not so, I would have told you; 

for I go to prepare a place for you...” 

 John 14:2

This Christmas, we can look with faith toward that Homecoming, when we will see our Emmanuel face to face.  Until that day, may we be ever ready to share His Word which illumines the path Homeward.

*edited from the archives