Come Let us Worship, Day 15, December 15

I recently visited a patient in hospital who was encouraged by a nurse who told them, “We’ll get you home for Christmas.”  I was reminded of Bing Cosby’s classic rendition of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas”.  It was recorded in 1943. Hundreds of people would have been gathered around their radios, listening with tears in their eyes hoping their fighting soldiers would 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 love light gleams.

I’ll be home for Christmas… if only in my dreams.

At the same time Christians are drawn to the classic song, sung by the late Jim Reeves:

This world is not my home I'm just a passing through
My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue
The angels beckon me from heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore
Oh lord you know I have no friend like you
If heaven's not my home then lord what will I do
The angels beckon me from heaven's open door
And I can't feel at home in this world anymore.

The tugs of this world, our friends and in particular family make the song dreamy instead of real for most of us.  Many of us would be reluctant to truly say, “This world is not my home . . . I’ll be home for Christmas.” I think there’s value for the believer to stop and reflect on their true home.  Jesus said, “In my Father’s house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you” (John 14:2, ESV). In the 19^th Century, Sanford Fillmore Bennett penned these words:

There's a land that is fairer than day,
and by faith we can see it afar;
for the Father waits over the way
to prepare us a dwelling place there.

Hebrews 13:14 encourages us to remember and find strength in the fact that “we seek the city that is to come.” It’s not only hopeless; it flies in the face of the Gospel to pursue lasting satisfaction in this life. The words “Here we have no lasting city” drive us to only source of contentment. Perhaps one of my readers, or even me, “will be home for Christmas”?

Father, you have set eternity in our hearts.  We know that we seek the city that is to come.  Lord, I pray that you will graciously wrest our hearts from what never satisfies and enable us today to set our affections on this above, where Christ IS, and to look to what is unseen, eternal and spiritual.  Grant us the discontent to truly say, “I can’t feel at home in this world anymore.”