by Rev Steve Nickodemus

Home for the holidays.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“But our citizenship is in heaven.”
Philippians 3:20a

The house is all decorated for Christmas, inside and out.  Lights, stockings, garlands, even a warm fire in the fireplace.  I find myself thinking about my sons and their families, far away.  “Wouldn’t it be nice to have everyone home for the holidays?”  I muse with more than a bit of longing and sadness.

But it is not meant to be.  We each have our responsibilities and our own homes.  “Perhaps you can never really go back home,” I think to myself.  There is always a longing for our “childhood home,” for being able to stay where life was familiar and safe.  It’s a longing for a fantasy of something that never changes, and where I am always loved.

I realize with a start that I am not describing my childhood home, but I am describing heaven.  It’s a place where I am fully loved, fully safe, fully at peace, where there is always a place for me by the fireside.  That home is not where I came from, but where I am going.  My rightful place, my real home, is not something I have seen, except by the eyes of faith.  It is not a remembrance, but a promise made good by my Savior, who left His home in heaven and came to bring me home…

The longing that is within me for home is for something that I only see dimly by the eyes of faith.  May the Lord grow my heart ever closer to my home with Him!  As it says on my Mom and Dad’s tombstone, “Heaven Is My Home!”

“From heaven above to earth I come
To bear good news to every home;
Glad tidings of great joy I bring,
Whereof I now will say and sing.”

“Ah, dearest Jesus, holy Child,
Prepare a bed, soft, undefiled,
A quiet chamber set apart
For you to dwell within my heart.”

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado