This Advent season has had me reflecting on the concept of “family” and “home”, both on behalf of the Titus 2 women and for myself. I was reading a review of a book that stated, “The author of Keeping the Feast connects the metaphor of home that runs through the stories of our faith – the Prodigal Son, the Son of May has nowhere to call home, heaven as home – with the deep desire to belong and to feel wanted. The author turns discussions about food and faith into what it means to live in community, to create home, and to feel at home. One of the characters in Robert Frost’s ‘Death of a Hired Man’ says, “Home is that place where, when you go there, they have to let you in.” I have found that place in my marriage, around our dining table with friends and family who have helped me make a mosaic out of the shards of fractured parts of my past. Home, for me, means to belong, to feel wanted.”
As I talked about this with several friends yesterday, we recognized that our concepts of “family” and “home” evolve over time, as relationships with children mature, divorces move some people out of our lives, friendships deepen, geographic relocations occur, and more. One thing that brings strength and stability to the concepts of “family” and “home” for me is my relationship with Christ. In places where I find others who share my love of Jesus, I feel at home and I find family, no matter the longitude and latitude or the sharing of ancestry. I hope you are at “home” this Christmas season, wherever and with whomever you find yourself celebrating.