“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” – Augustine

This time of the year there is always a lot of talk around the idea of being “home” for Christmas. Along with the question, “Will you be home this Christmas?”

Throughout more than four decades of ministry – in Atlanta, Pensacola, Brandon and Wake Forest – people were always saying “We’re going home for Christmas. See you in the New Year.” Tarboro, on the other hand, is the place people come home to.

The longing tells the story

The song, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” – originally recorded and made famous by Bing Crosby in 1943 – is a World War Two heartstring-tugging classic that drew heavily on the longing for peace and the deep poignancies of distance and separation.

Christmas, of course, is extremely evocative emotionally and a lot of it has to do with the longing people feel for some of the ideals that they feel anchor them, or at least feel should anchor them. This is especially true when there is loss, through death or separation or broken relationships.

Here’s the thing about that pain, that longing – it is not only rooted in something real, the real is rooted in something still more true. In other words, even “home” (in Tarboro, or the house you grew up in, or the grandparents you lost and still mourn, or the family you miss with such a wrenching longing) is evocative of even deeper truth.

This is why, sometimes, someone will wander into church one Sunday morning and tell us “it feels like I have come home.”

Which brings us back to the original question about what it means to “Be home for Christmas.” The tug on your heart is rooted in something true, more true than nostalgia or the tears we shed. The longing points to what I would call our heart’s true home.

We are thirsty because water exists, air is something we are desperate for because we were created to breathe it, a baby roots for milk only because milk is possible, we crave pizza for the same reason, we search for love in response to the fact that love is not make believe. Our need for a thing proves its existence, and our hearts are hungry and thirsty – even a little bit desperate – for God only because that yearning is rooted in something so true, so real, that our souls carry a memory of it.

Maybe what we are nostalgic for when we listen to “I’ll be home for Christmas” is not so much “snow and mistletoe” or “presents on the tree” as it is our heart’s true home? Maybe Christmas helps us to remember? Maybe the words of Saint Augustine still ring true because they are true: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” 

It turns out we absolutely can be home for Christmas, all of us – DEREK