I’ll Be Home For Christmas

Christmas. It has always been my favorite time of the year. Growing up, I loved it mainly because I knew I got two weeks off of school. It meant staying up a little bit later to watch Christmas movies on ABC Family and baking the sweetest treats. But the one thing I looked forward to the most were the presents! I remember waking my sister up at 2:00 a.m. on Christmas morning, tiptoeing out to our living room to get the slightest peek at what Santa brought for us before running back and cannon-balling into bed with the biggest smiles on our faces!

As I grew older and went off to college, it was no longer the presents I looked forward to most but simply being able to “come home” for Christmas!

I believe as we all get older, the importance of “being home” for the holidays takes on utmost importance. Each year around Christmas, we see a record-breaking number of flights! People will brave the winter storms, they will take Ubers, trains, and do whatever it takes to make it back home to their families! People have quite the stories!

Returning to the heart of the season…

Speaking of stories. Have you ever thought of the Christmas Story? (Not the one with the leg lamp) But the one where Jesus Christ left His own home to be with us on earth?!

Jesus Christ left His heavenly throne and entered our world, which He created, as a little baby boy born in a feeding trough for cows in a little nowhere town called Bethlehem. It was quite the opposite of rags to riches. More like riches to rags.

This is not the entrance anyone would expect from a King, nor the home of any King I’ve ever read about. But this is what makes the Christmas story unlike any we have ever heard before. God, our Heavenly Father, left His beautiful home to make a home within our hearts here on earth.

John 14:23: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.”

As we travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to our homes this Christmas season, may we keep in the forefront of our minds, the great lengths Jesus traveled to make His earthly entrance and home in a manger in Bethlehem. And as we knock on the doors of our loved ones and are greeted with smiles, hugs, and a big “WELCOME HOME,” let us not forget to open the door and invite Jesus into the home of our hearts.

That longing we all have to step foot into our earthly homes, full of Christmas carols, fresh smells of homemade cookies, and the love of our family, is just a small glimpse into the greatest longing our souls have on this earth. Our souls are groaning to find our true home with God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let us open the doors of our hearts for Him!

Revelation 3:20: “See! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”

The question I leave with is: What makes a home a good one? And have you welcomed Jesus into your heart, and if so, how has He changed your life?

Merry Christmas to you and your family! May the Love of Christ find His home in your heart this Christmas season!

Sincerely, Sarah Marmelstein (Sponcil)

Mere Christianity is one of many books that I have come to love in my walk with the Lord. As we talk about our homes, and our true longing and desire to be home with Jesus Christ, this quote by one of my favorite authors, C.S. Lewis, has always stood out to me:

“The Christian says, ‘Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or to be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that country and to help others to do the same.'”

― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity