Home Sweet Home

Who said...?

"The ornament of a home is the friends who frequent it."
"There is no place like home."
"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, L. Frank Baum, Robert Frost

What did your first house look like? Was it everything you could ever want? Did it meet your minimum expectations? Does it bring back fond memories? Perhaps some memories should remain etched in our minds forever to serve as a reminder of what was and what could have been. Oddly enough, these memories serve as a reminder to us that even though things could have been better, they could have been much worse. And some memories are recorded for us by those who witnessed the truth.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem and his first temporary home was a manger! Do you know that a manger was a feeding trough! Can you imagine giving birth to a baby in a stable and wrapping him in whatever cloth was available and placing the infant in a feeding trough? A place where pigs ate leftovers, slobbered, and rubbed their runny noses in the feeding trough!

Staying in Bethlehem for a short time, Mary and Joseph went to Jerusalem to dedicate the baby. After a short time in Jerusalem the couple returned to Galilee and stayed at Nazareth until Jesus was two years old. They fled to Egypt when Herod attempted to kill the young child. For the first two years of his life, Jesus appeared to be caught between a rock and a hard place.

After Herod died the couple returned to Nazareth and made their home. Jesus grew and they went to Jerusalem yearly for the Feast of Passover.

Like any Jewish child, he took on the trade of his father. Making the best of a simple life you would believe that Nazareth was home-sweet-home, but you would be mistaken.

This world would no more be Jesus’ home-sweet-home than it is ours. This is but a stop on your way to somewhere more permanent. Jesus left his home in heaven and returned to it after a brief journey here. Where’s your home?

"For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life." 2 Corinthians 5:1-4