where is home for you?...

i was sitting with a friend of mine at the hill’s starbucks in vegas a few years back and they started playing a song there and he said, "that is the best CHRISTmas song that has ever been written." now he had just told me the news that he had just gotten back from his home in ohio where he had buried his 85 year-old dad so home was on his mind.

my wife, margaret has told me of how her dad who as a 17-year-old navy sailor out on a ship at sea back during wwii, they would play that song over the loud speaker and he would lean over the rail and cry, cry for home. the song is i'll be home for CHRISTmas.

it's curious when you think about it, most people plan to be any place but home on other major holidays. people go south for easter, north for the fourth of july, anywhere on labor day. but CHRISTmas is different, isn't it? people fly across the country or drive half the night through snowstorms to be home for CHRISTmas.

it's all rather ironic when you read carefully the account of the CHRISTmas story in the bible you find that no one was home at the first CHRISTmas. mary and joseph weren't home. their home was nazareth, and they found themselves in bethlehem.

the shepherds weren't home. they had to work that night out in the fields. the wise men from the east weren't home. they were traveling a great distance. in a very real way, JESUS, the CHRISTmas child, was very far from home.

and just think about that, will you? the SON of GOD leaves HIS home, HE's born a homeless person in a temporary shelter, HE identifies with the homeless all throughout HIS ministry, HE's buried in a borrowed grave, and, yet, through HIS death and resurrection, HE enables all wandering people to recapture a sense of home in this life, recapture a sense of belonging, a sense of safety, a sense of optimism and, beyond that, HE promises a permanent home in heaven forever.

and the truth is, we aren't home either, my dad is, my father and mother-in-law are and someday i will be too because JESUS left HIS home to come and find me because i was lost and now i'm found. and the truth is for the CHRISTian, home is where JESUS is.

just a thought from the front porch…