Go Home!

• Mark 5:19 Go home to your people and report what great things the Lord has done.

Every time I hear the song, “I’ll be home for Christmas” it brings back good memories; memories of my childhood: home, family and many wonderful Christmases.

Isn’t it funny how hard we work to get away from home? Most days home is a place we leave. We get up in the morning and rush through our morning getting ready to leave and then we come home at night tired and determined to rest up so that we can leave home again the next day.

Vacations are about getting away. The teen years are about getting away. We work in the yard, go shopping, golfing and hunting to “get out of the house.”

Yet once a year – during the Christmas season – people make incredible efforts to go home. Why is this? Perhaps it is the instinctive knowledge in all of us that there is an “eternal home” where our loving Creator lives and where we were created to live. Perhaps it is an understanding that home is supposed to be a warm, loving, accepting place where people are celebrated, not just tolerated.

All I know is that home is a place we want to be, come Christmas. Maybe if we worked harder during the rest of the year to make home more “Christmasie” it would be a place where we – and those we love – want to be all year long.

Perhaps the goal for 2013 should not be: a better job, a better education, a better car, a better wardrobe, or a better hundred-other-things out there vying for our attention. Perhaps the goal for 2013 should be: a better home. Perhaps the slogan should be: “Go home”.

A good way to start is by adding one letter to that slogan: “GoD home.”

P.S. This blog is dedicated to G.F. (you know who you are) who came home for Christmas // we love you.