By Erica Bailey
I’ll be home for Christmas. You can count on me.
Eric and I have moved quite a bit over the past 22 years. Each time we move to a new place, like Dr. Seuss’s mother seeking bird, my heart asks, “Are you my home?” The answer came to me as I was driving my commute to Saskatoon this past winter.
Please have snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree.
When I think of home, a lot of pictures flicker through my head. The year everyone got an iPhone for Christmas and we jokingly took a picture of everyone on their phone. The year, everyone was at our new place in Prince Albert, stuffed into our tiny living room, the air buzzing with cheer and the tearing of paper. The year being together at Florida with extended family and braving the long lines at Disney. The year we drove to Victoria and stopped at a friend’s house along the way. The years between our last visits vanished, like we’d never been apart. Home, for me, is tied up in people, not places.
Christmas Eve will find me where the love light beams
In 1943, when Bing Crosby recorded “I’ll be Home for Christmas”, the song resonated with soldiers so far away from loved ones. The images reminded them not of places, but of times they had been with family during the holidays. The GI magazine Yank said Crosby “accomplished more for military morale than anyone else of that era” (Wikipedia). The song provided hope that these soldiers would one day be with their loved one again.
“For this world is not our permanent home; we are looking forward to a home yet to come” Hebrews 13:14 (NLT). This world isn’t our home, but our God is. Perhaps these scenes of “home”, the glimpses we get of feeling “at home”, is a part of us recognizing that part of you that is a reflection of our God, our ultimate home. It is a promise of our home to come.
I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.