Friend of Dial Hope, were you home for Christmas?

Why do we do it? Why do we press our way through mobbed airports and clogged highways as if our lives depended on getting to the place where we belong at Christmas time? I believe it is because home is at the heart of the Christmas story. Robert Frost, the poet, once wrote, "Home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in."

In her book Traveling Mercies Anne Lamott tells the story of a child who got lost one day. She ran up and down the streets of the big city in which she lived. But she couldn't find a single landmark. She was very frightened. Finally, a policeman stopped to help her. He put her in the police car, and they drove around together until she finally saw her church out the window of the police car. She yelled, "Stop!" and the police officer put on the brakes. She said, "Sir, you can let me out now. This is my church, and I can always find my way home from here." There is in our human hearts a true sense that there is a place where we belong, and that somehow we got separated from it a long time ago, and we miss it. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it so well, "We sense that that place misses us, too," and because we cannot find our way there, the place comes to us, and it turns out not to be a place at all. It turns out to be a person, Emmanuel, the one who came to be with us forever. In this New Year of 2010, may our lives be your manger, Lord Jesus Christ. And may the world be flooded with your light and with your love.

Prayer:  O God of sunrise and sunset, let this day be a day of sunrise in our hearts, when all things are made bright and new. We thank you that you have chosen to make your home in our hearts. Help us now to make this day a masterpiece. In Jesus' name. Amen.