Coming Home
Coming Home
Hello friends, and welcome to The Twig.
We’re here in Fountain Hills, Arizona this week, spending time with family, and it has been wonderful. When my parents first moved to the desert, they kept telling me it was like paradise. Honestly, at first I just didn’t get it.
“It’s brown… it’s dry… where’s the water?”
But over the years, the desert has grown on me. I get it now. There is a beauty here that reveals itself slowly, and once it does, it stays with you.
As we step into Advent, we’ve been thinking about that familiar phrase:
“Coming home for Christmas.”
For us, coming home to Fountain Hills is a reminder that the physical location of home can shift and change. So whether you’re returning to the same place you’ve gone for 50 years, or you’re walking into a brand new home this season—
We want to welcome you home this Christmas.
Home Is More Than an Address
Home has meant many things for us over the years:
Denver
Frisco
Fountain Hills
Wausau
Rhinelander
Little cabins
Rentals
Temporary in-between spaces
We’ve packed boxes and unpacked boxes, said hello and goodbye, over and over again.
And yet, no matter where we’ve lived, we keep learning the same spiritual truth:
Home is always more than an address.
There is an elusive feeling of home that so many of us are searching for. And even when everything on the outside says, “You should feel settled,” something inside still aches for more.
A friend recently shared:
“I miss seeing my parents in Arizona,”—but her parents are no longer living.”
That longing… that ache… is not a failure. And it’s not restlessness.
It is a spiritual truth.
We were made for an eternal home with God.
And nothing on earth will ever fully satisfy the homesickness we feel.
St. Augustine said it long before us:
“Our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”
Advent: A Season of Homesickness
While the world prepares for Christmas with lights, gifts, and activity, Advent prepares us inside—for coming close, coming home to God.
Part of coming home for Christmas is also coming home to ourselves.
Not the self shaped by:
fear
performance
people-pleasing
comparison
others’ expectations
…but the self God created us to be.
Advent invites us to pause and ask:
“Where have I strayed from my true self?”
“Where have I wandered into distraction, comparison, resentment, or self-reliance?”
And here’s the beautiful thing:
When we come home, God doesn’t meet us with shame — God meets us with welcome.
Like the father running down the road to embrace the prodigal son, God says:
“Come home.
Come home to Me.
Come home to who you truly are.”
The Deeper Invitation of This Season
So this Advent, while you’re decorating the tree, shopping for gifts, driving through snow, or boarding airplanes…
Remember the deeper invitation:
Come home to God.
Come home to yourself.
It’s a lifelong journey—one we take again and again.
Maybe this Advent could be a season of returning:
returning to love
returning to hope
returning to peace
returning to joy
returning to the quiet center where God already dwells
And as we wait for Christ to come again, I pray we each experience the joy of discovering:
Our true home has always been open to us in Christ.
Amen.
Welcome home.
