I'll Be Home for Christmas

I'll be home for Christmas 

You can plan on me 

Please have snow and mistletoe 

And presents on the tree 

Christmas Eve will find me 

Where the lovelight gleams 

I'll be home for Christmas

If only in my dreams

This melancholy song was written in 1943, from the viewpoint of an American soldier, who promises he'll be "home for Christmas", if only in his dreams.

To many people, the idea of being home for Christmas is something only in their dreams.  We still have soldiers in faraway lands who would like nothing more than to be with their families.  Every week my wife and I work with ladies in a Missouri state prison, and at this time of year they are all depressed, wishing they could be with their families.

Of the family I grew up in, only my mother and I are left.  My father and both brothers have passed on in recent years, and my mother is now in a nursing home and eager to follow them.  While I'll be with my wife and our boys and their families this Christmas, a part of me dreams of being with the family of my childhood.

Perhaps, though, we've lost sight of the roots of our Christmas traditions.

On the first Christmas, Mary & Joseph were not home with their families.  Mary had most likely been shunned by her family and community, who didn't believe her story of Divine conception.  In fact, they could have had her stoned to death for what they believed to be her sins.

Joseph chose to turn his back on family and community in favor of believing in Mary and in the angel messenger.  And then, to top it off, the two of them had to leave their home in Nazareth and make the long trip to their ancestral home in Bethlehem, where they couldn't even find a comfortable room for the night.

The shepherds of that era mostly lived day and night out on the hillsides with their sheep, away from their families.  But on this night, they left even their home in the pastures to go see the newborn king.

The magi were most certainly not at home on that Christmas.  They had traveled thousands of miles from their homes in search of a king they had learned about in their studies.

Even Jesus Himself was not at home.

Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God
something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness. (Philippians 2)

And yet, in a way, Jesus was at home.

We're told over and over again that for those who choose to love Him, He makes His home in our hearts.

Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. (John 14:23

My mother is still struggling with accepting the Home as her new home. She told me this week that anytime I'm there visiting her, it's home.

I agreed with her, then told her what I've just shared with you, about no one being at home for the first Christmas. And that even when I'm not with her, Jesus continues to make His home there in her heart. Whether she's back at her house in Moberly, here in the nursing home in Columbia, or even when she moves on from this world to her eternal home, she is at home with her Lord.

To all of my Tiger Baseball family & friends, I wish and pray that wherever you are, no matter whom you're missing this holiday season, you will know the joy and peace that comes from being at home with Him.