12 Days Of Christmas: Baby Please Come Home

Dec 21

In 1963, Darlene Love released the classic hit, “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home).”

This song has proved to have epic staying power, continuing to top holiday charts nearly 60 years later.  Filled with raw emotion and longing, these lyrics frequently ring through speakers and radio stations throughout the month of December,

Pretty lights on the tree

I'm watching them shine

You should be here with me

Baby please come home

They're singing "Deck The Halls"

But it's not like Christmas at all

'Cause I remember when you were here

And all the fun we had last year

Something about this song just puts a sense of yearning in my heart. You can feel the pain behind the simple request, “Baby please come home.”

When someone or something is missing, home doesn’t feel like home, does it? This year especially, as you enter holiday celebrations that may look different than before, it’s easy to feel that longing. Something feels off. Maybe 2020 has taken something from you - whether it be a job, a loved one, health, or an overall sense of safety. Nothing feels like home and it certainly doesn’t feel like Christmas. You’re almost left feeling homesick.

I think this is how God’s people felt over 2000 years ago. Homesick, lost, wondering where God was and when He would show up. Without the voices of prophets to guide them, I’m sure they would have been singing along to these lyrics as well.

And then heaven crashes into earth with the birth of a little baby in Bethlehem. Suddenly the waiting is over.

22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet:

23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call Him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

- Matthew 1:22-23

God is with us. The homesickness is cured because home has found its way to earth. God isn’t distant, He is here, and He wants to be our home.

I don’t think that feeling of yearning is a bad thing - I think it’s our reminder that this world is broken, and this world isn’t our home. It’s really easy to try and make homes out of things here: people, money, success, popularity. But ultimately those wells run dry and we are left homesick again.

This Christmas, God is inviting you to stop trying to find home in things that are only imitations of Him. God is inviting you to come home. We aren’t designed for the imitations, we are designed for Immanuel. God with us. He is singing to you, “Baby please come home.”

How will you respond? Will you sit in the longing, letting it eat away at you? Will you cover it up with other vices and bury it with the busyness of the season?

Or will you run to the Father, let Him embrace you, and hear the words: “Welcome home.”

Cristina Schmitter

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