I’ve just got back from a half term break. It was a wet and windy week in Cornwall, but my parents had gone down the day before and as we came in out of the dark the smell of a roasted chicken with all the trimmings greeted us. Most welcome. For me half term is the marker between the end of the harvest celebrations and the beginning of our journey towards advent, and, of course, Christmas.
The clocks have gone back and the nights are drawing in. Christmas lights are appearing in town centres and Christmas songs are being played in the shops. It’s all coming a bit too quickly.
There is such an emphasis on hosting the perfect Christmas. Presents under the tree, and stuffed into stockings. A perfectly decorated house, with a beautifully laid table and a place for everyone…
This year of course, not everyone will be present. Their place will remain empty at the table, one less gift to buy. Times like Christmas and birthdays are when we miss our loved ones the most. We may not feel like celebrating at all, and simply go through the motions, spending the money but feeling hollow inside.
This is not what Jesus’ birth was supposed to bring.
God didn’t send his son from heaven in order for us to become pre-occupied with a seasonal pig out. Jesus came to be with us, to bring his peace his hope, his sense of being more at home in the Kingdom of God, than in Santa’s Christmas Kingdom. Although there was that time he turned water into wine.
Jesus wants us to be at home with him, where there is always room for one more. Today we may be able to glimpse a vision of what that may be like when we pray, when we gather together in church for a special occasion. But tomorrow, sometime in the future, we shall discover what it really means to have the perfect Christmas, the perfect celebration of being at home with Jesus, where the table is laid before us, and rooms are prepared and waiting in the home of the king of kings.
For us, that is all to come. For our loved ones the time is here. For us there is an empty place at the table, for our loved ones there is a whole new sense of ‘home’, where one day we shall be welcome too.
So tonight we light our candles in memory of someone very special. We hold our loved ones in our hearts, we shall never forget them or stop loving them. But when it comes to laying the Christmas table, stuffing one less stocking, let us not be mournful in their absence, but raise a glass and make a toast to absent friends. And when at midnight we finally place the baby Jesus in the nativity crib, let us take comfort from the knowledge that both Jesus and our loved ones are now back at home where they belong, in a room prepared in the Father’s house.
Read more dreams of the kingdom here
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