A First Home for the Holidays
My grand puppy Koa welcomes you to his first home.
We’ve spent the past few days making Koa’s house a dwelling place for him and his parents, Michael and Paige.
As we rustled through bits and pieces of old and new from two families, I think how appropriate is to prepare a first home during the Advent season, when we usher traditions old and new into our homes to welcome the dwelling of God among us as a newborn child.
We repurposed family treasures and took trips to everyone’s favorite, Home Goods, to create a space of their own for these young marrieds.
Two enthusiastic sets of parents drop in to help.
As the pavers were laid, a wall torn down to make room for necessities, and a space carved out for Michael to study for medical school this house was transformed into a dwelling place that will house the foundation of their lives as a couple.
Bits and pieces of two families united into one decorate this space.
Christmas tree lights hover over the little coffee bar I just refinished for them. It was Paige’s grandmother’s antique pie safe.
The old doctor’s almanac from Michael’s grandmother was placed on a shelf in his newly furnished office study.
His new lamp is on late into the night as he studies the intricacies of the human body, charts, and slides and questions on each anatomic system.
And Christmas is this miracle, that God himself would take the form of this human body to walk upon the earth with us. To dwell with us. The divine made human. Immanuel. God with us.
The Christ child we celebrate at Christmas becomes the savior we celebrate on Easter. Wooden timbers that cradled him in the manger later suspend him on a cross.
The cross opened the door for him to become our dwelling place. The place where we find shelter and refuge and safely and peace. When we abide in him, he dwells with us.
We prepare the timbers of Christmas. We put up the tree. We hang a fresh wreath by the door of this first home.
Owning a first home is a gift to celebrate, just as we celebrated two advents ago this young couple coming together as one in marriage. Two souls, two families blended together to make two backgrounds into one. And that is the miracle of rebirth in Christ. He takes our old nature and blends his divine nature into ours to make a new creation.
The complexities of creation unfold each day in this tiny office we have set up for my son to study and prepare. Late into the night he repeats the process of reviewing and memorizing the complexities of the human body.
What seems familiar becomes more miraculous and complex the more we examine it. The same should happen as we welcome the Christmas story each year. Sadly it can become too familiar and routine.
We forget to quiet ourselves to study the depths of this mystery: that God would dwell among us and one day, in us,
Every year we hear these refrains of the Christmas story echo in shops, in the car, in our churches as we make our holiday preparations.
Each advent the meaning should become clearer.
The mystery should become more miraculous--God chose to dwell in the secret place of a woman and be born under a dark sky in an explosion of light to dwell among us.
As we prepare and nest and rustle through things old and new to usher in his coming and make our homes his dwelling place, whether it is our first home, or our empty nest, welcome Him who found his home among us.
Welcome Him who chose to dwell with us.
