I'll Be Home for Christmas

During the dark days of World War II American G.I.s were serving their country on foreign battlefields all around the globe.  In 1943, the outcome of the war was far from certain. D-Day was months away and Hitler still had a strangle-hold on Europe. Likewise, in the Pacific Gen. Douglas MacArthur had been driven from the Philippines and many soldiers became POWs. 

But in 1943 singer Bing Crosby released a song, written from the perspective of a soldier far away from home at Christmas. The dreamy tune and homespun lyrics shot up the music charts and has remained a Christmas classic ever since: 

I’ll be home for Christmas, you can plan on me. 

Please have snow and mistletoe and presents on the tree. 

Christmas Eve will find me where the love light gleams. 

I’ll be home for Christmas, if only in my dreams.

                                

In 1965 during the Gemini 7 mission astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell had spent 14 days in space orbiting the Earth some 206 times. With Christmas soon approaching the NASA mission control asked the crew if they would like for them broadcast a song to their spacecraft. The astronauts fittingly requested, “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”[1]  

                                               

A few Christmases ago my father was doing some digging in a closet, when he came across a forgotten treasure. Buried behind coats and boxes was an LP record of Bing Crosby’s most beloved Christmas hits. This was the album he nearly wore out as a kid. Upon playing the LP you could tell it had been well loved because it was full of hisses and pops (as you audiophiles know it’s that vintage sound that you can’t get from an iPod). As I listened to “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” a sudden revelation came over me.    

One of the great ironies of the first Christmas was that almost everyone involved wasn’t home for the momentous occasion. The angels left heaven to announce to the shepherds where to find the Christ child. Joseph and Mary left their home in Nazareth and journeyed to Bethlehem to be counted for the census. A difficult trek was no doubt made more strenuous by Mary advanced stages in pregnancy. The Magi who traveled to see the infant king were hundreds of miles away from their home in the East, presumably Babylon. 

Most importantly, Jesus was far, far from his Heavenly home that first Christmas. Just how far, no astronomer has the tools measure the light-years of distance. But the apostle John in the prologue to His Gospel indicates that Jesus journeyed from His cosmic precipice outside our time-space continuum to this tiny, blue orb and inserted himself into the human story:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made . . . 14 And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

NASA tells that the Hubble Space Telescope can peer into the deep reaches of space, some 15 billion light-years away. Its lenses have brought into focus billions of stars and galaxies that we didn’t even know existed. Yet, John tells that Jesus came from far beyond the edge of the observable universe, from a place where time and space are irrelevant. A place called eternity.

The only way the infinite distance between heaven and earth could be spanned is if God took the initiative and spanned the gap. Jesus came to be the bridge from earth to heaven. He didn’t come to be a way to heaven, but to be the way to heaven. Because He was 100% deity, Christ could take hold of God the Father and by being 100% man he reached down to man and brought these two estranged parties together. Christmas is about heaven meeting earth.    

Later Jesus said in John 14, “In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?  And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also (John 14:2-3).” 

The Christmas story was the beginning of our journey home. Christ was born in a borrowed manger so that you can I could have permanent mansion. He came unto His own and was not received so that we could be accepted by God. He left His heavenly home, to invite us to join Him there. Once we’ve beheld the Christ child, and we bowed at the blood-splattered cross of Calvary, and then worshipped at the empty tomb we find the road that leads home. 

---

[1] David Jeremiah, “Be Home for Christmas,” Turning Points Magazine & Devotional, December 2012, p. 11-12.