Home for Christmas

Dave Gobbett | 17:22, 08 December 2020

Tom Jones longs to touch its green, green grass. And if you’re a ten-year-old Macauley Culkin, its somewhere you definitely don’t want to be alone at Christmas. Home!

We’re nearing the end of an exhausting year of global pandemic. We stayed at home, holidayed at home and worked from home as much as possible. We’ve hosted birthday parties on Zoom at home.

It’s a time for sharing and feasting and being with our nearest and dearest

We’ve done star jumps with Joe Wicks at home. We’ve clapped health-workers from our doorsteps at home. Home, home, home. And so it might seem odd to view Christmas at home as something to look forward to or relish. “Not more time at home!”, some might think.

But then this is Christmas. It’s a time for sharing and feasting and being with our nearest and dearest (in up to three-household bubbles, of course). And for many people, there’s no better place for that, than at home. 

For some, a Christmas at home will be ... with an empty seat at the table

Though of course not all. For some, a Christmas at home will be a Christmas alone, or maybe with an empty seat at the table. For others, it will be full of conflict and tension, awkward silences and unhappy memories. Still others are very far from a place that they can call home.

The Nativity story reminds us that 2000 years ago, the Son of God left his heavenly home, to enter ours. He was born, not into the royal home of a prince, but into the humble home of a pauper. As the Christmas carol reminds us: ‘With the poor and mean and lowly, lived on earth our saviour holy’. Which means, whatever concerns and fears we’re facing this Christmas, God understands. And that by his death and resurrection, Jesus has opened up the way to his heavenly home for all who look to him.

On behalf of the whole Highfields Church family, Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2021.

Dave Gobbett Highfields Church Lead Minister