British Poet G.K. Chesterton wrote a poem called "The House of Christmas" that captures the underlying feelings and mixed emotions that so often accompany the season before Christmas.
For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honor and high surprise;
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the Yule tale was begun.
(from
Modern British Poetry)
Feeling "out of place" or homesick is a genuine human emotion that emerges with a vengeance during the holiday season. These feelings show up in scriptures from both the Old and New Testaments read during Advent. We encounter it in the words of a homesick prophet named Jeremiah, writing from prison. He could see the upcoming destruction: the temple ransacked, the smoldering city, homes destroyed, families disrupted, and the people carried off into exile. But that was not all Jeremiah could see. He saw beyond the obvious destruction and oppression something even more real. God's spirit gave Jeremiah the vision of what the poet Chesterton referred to in the last verse of his "House of Christmas" as "the things that cannot be (but) are." Jeremiah helped the people see the hopeful vision that he saw: that one day God would bring them home. "With prophetic vision, he could see God's promise of healing, restoration, return and renewal (James Harnish in An Advent Study for Adults)."
The whole of chapter 33 in Jeremiah's prophecy is about promise: God's promises to his fickle, homesick, unfaithful, love-starved people to find the hope, love, joy and peace that only being at home with God can bring. Jeremiah not only saw the vision; he heard the laughter of homesick exiles skipping along on the road that would bring them home.
We are among God's fickle, homesick, love-starved people who need the message of Advent, the holy invitation to come home for Christmas. The journey begins as we learn to pray, in the words of the Christmas carol:
O holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray;
Cast out our sin, and enter in, be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels the great glad tidings tell.
O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel!"
Come home to love!
LeeAnn
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