Home for Christmas

 “At that time I will bring you home.”
 – Zephaniah 3:20

No other time of the year, than the period from Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Year, does the theme of “Home” become so visible.

Everything is about home. The commercials on Christmas are all about home. And of course tying “home” into spending money. “Home is where the heart is” falls on the lips of many persons. “Home for the holidays.”

We place such high expectations on “home” that when we finally get home, we often don’t find what we are looking for. Yet we think, “Home is where, when you have no other place to go, they have to take you in.” But of course we know that is not always the case. So many people are found without a home, or not welcome home.

Yesterday on the way home from church, a place that I call home, I was stopped in a line of cars on Hillsborough Avenue waiting to turn left onto Interstate 275 in Tampa, FL. As is often the case, there was a nice-looking youngish man standing at the end of the medium with his belongings and a cardboard sign:“I’m hungry. Can you help. Food would be helpful.”

Most cars passed him by. The person in the car in front of me reached out his arm and handed the man some money. That made me remember that I had two bags of apples on the floor near me. As I pulled up alongside the man, he was looking down the line, not at me. I rolled down the window and said, “Would you like some apples?”

He replied, “Yes. That will help me with food through the week.” I handed over the apples.

It was then I noticed his belongings neatly rolled up at his feet. There on the top of his roll was a blanket that had come from Church World Service and which had been given to him through the church I attend.

I suddenly felt like the apples were more than sustenance. They were, in so many ways, a symbol of Home.

On the door knocker of the church I attend is printed the words “There’s no place like home.” Although the man probably doesn’t even know about my church, he knows what home is. The blanket for him is not only a warm covering on a cold night; it is home.

 But, perhaps the apples, the things we do, the hearts we share, the love that flows through us is more than that; it is home. Christmas is all about home. Within the Christmas story is found the truth that God offers us a home, and that we are challenged to make a place within us that God can call home.

Where are you at with busyness during this Christmas season? Are you done yet? says our Pastor. In the midst of doing, take a moment to open yourselves to being a home for the divine. For the person without a home. For others.

Home isn’t a place where they have to take you in. Home is a place where they want you to come in and a place where we want to go and a place where we become for others, for the divine Home.

Come Home for Christmas. And stay.