Home for Christmas?

Here in central Iowa we are preparing for our first major snowstorm of the year. If I don't have anywhere I need to be, I just love a good snowstorm. I think it's because it causes us to slow down or sometimes literally stop and take a break from the busyness of life. There is also something about the stillness of the falling snow that no words can accurately describe.

As beautiful as it may be, I worry about my family members and others who are traveling this weekend. With this being the weekend before Christmas, there are many people on the roads and sitting in airports trying to get home to celebrate the holidays with their loved ones. The eight years we lived in North Carolina we always drove the 950 miles to come home for Christmas. We couldn't image Christmas celebrations without being with our families. What is it about "home?"

When my husband and I called a family meeting to tell our three children we were moving from Iowa, the only home they had ever known, to North Carolina, I remember saying to them, "Home is wherever we are together." I'm not exactly sure what I meant by that but I thought it sounded good as I tried to reassure our children who were 13, 11, and 8 that this major life change would be just fine.

As it turned out, the move was a very good thing for our family and I do believe there is some truth to my words of comfort to our children. Home is more about who you’re with than the physical place that you are in. I’m finding even more truth to these words as we prepare for yet another move. We felt very much “at home” in North Carolina when we celebrated Thanksgiving, Easter and other holidays with our neighbors and friends from church.

So what about those that will not be home for Christmas? In 2007, Josh Groban released his Noel album with “I’ll be Home for Christmas” that features soldiers speaking greetings to their family members. Six years later, that song still brings tears to my eyes for all of those soldiers and families that will be apart during the holidays. I also find myself thinking of those whose home life is anything but pleasant. There are people that are alone with no families, some who are physically or emotionally abused by their families and some that can only be described as dysfunctional. For these people, home can be a painful word and Christmas is anything but a joyous celebration.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus, Emmanuel, it is my prayer that people will know and be assured that God is with us, the literal meaning of Emmanuel. Since we are all created in God’s image, there is a longing and desire to return home to God. So on this Christmas, even though some people will not be able to physically be home with their loved ones, we are all able to be home with God, our Father and creator. Through God’s gift of a baby born to Mary, we are able to have a personal and intimate relationship with God. God has come to dwell among us and to bring us home. Will you be home for Christmas?

Advent Waiting

I've never been a very patient person so waiting is hard for me. I would like to think that with age, I've become a more patient person than I when I was in my 20s. And even though waiting is hard, I really like the season of Advent. The word Advent means "coming" or "arrival."  It's the time in the church year where we try to be intentional about preparing for Christ's arrival both as a child in a manager and in Christ's glorious return to judge the living and the dead.

We've been holding midweek Advent services using the resource from Sundays and Seasons, titled "The Gifts of Advent" and I believe Advent is a gift. It's an opportunity to come to worship not just on the additional Wednesdays but also Sunday morning and quiet our hearts in this busy time. There have been Christmas'of past where I've not prepared and I found myself empty and disconnected come Christmas morning.

God bringing his son, Jesus into the world on the first Advent is a gift I want to celebrate while I wait for Christ's return in the second Advent. I want to be prepared to celebrate Emmanuel, which means "God is with us." And although I know that through the power of the Holy Spirit, God is with us now, I still want to prepare my heart to receive the gift of Emmanuel born to the Virgin Mary. 

So as a way to prepare, we wait. We wait to put the poinsettias in the sanctuary. We wait to sing the full selection of Christmas Carols. We wait for God to gift us again with God's son, Jesus. In this season of Advent, may your waiting be fruitful and may this prayer guide your waiting.

You keep us waiting.
You the God of all time,
want us to wait for the right time in which to discover
who we are, where we must go, 
who will be with us, and what we must do.
So thank you...for the waiting time.

You keep us looking.
You, the God of all space,
want us to look in the right and wrong places
for signs of hope,
for people who are hopeless,
for visions of a better world that will appear
among the disappointments of the world we know.
So thank you...for the looking time.

You keep us loving.
You, the God whose name is love,
want us to be like you--
to love the loveless and the unlovely and the unlovable;
to love without jealousy or design or threat;
and most difficult of all, to love ourselves.
So thank you...for the loving time.

And in all this, you keep us,
through hard questions with no easy answers;
through failing where we hoped to succeed
and making an impact when we felt we were useless;
through the patience and the dreams and the love of others;
and through Jesus Christ and his Spirit,
you keep us.
So thank you...for the keeping time,
and for now, and for ever. Amen

Iona Community, Scotland