In 1943, American soldiers were experiencing their first Christmas away from home during World War II. The song “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was released that year, and Bing Crosby’s voice went out widely across the airwaves.
With its gaze homeward at a special time of the year, the song spoke to that universal love and longing for the place you feel most welcome, secure, connected. This year, for the first time in a while, we will be home for Christmas in Northern Ireland – so we recorded this song in honor of that!
When we first moved to America nearly 20 years ago, ideas of home suddenly became more significant. We were trying to build a new one in a new land while also being very much aware of our home thousands of miles away. We saw things at different angles. Feeling a little on the outside brought us into the inside of a deeper sense of home that’s beyond geography and beyond time.
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Frederick Buechner once wrote, “Faith is homesickness. Faith is a lump in the throat… Faith is waiting. Faith is journeying through space and through time.”
Homesickness is such a compelling way to consider a life of faith. To follow Christ and find our rest in Him will always mean earthly life is a pilgrim journey; an immigrant’s story. One day I will be truly home. The love of home as we find it here and now only presses that hope in more. This thought has always grown my sense of adventure, and when I have felt homesick or lonely, kept my heart up.
No home on earth is permanent. But perhaps our longing for home is the very thing that reminds us that we are made for something beyond what we can see, beyond what can be held in time and space.
If you feel on the outside looking in this evening … if your sense of home feels broken … if there is a homesickness niggling at your soul … listen to the words of the carols, hear their good tidings, ask the Lord to open your heart to receive His grace, and be welcomed home.
Kristyn Getty is a GRAMMY®-nominated recording artist from Northern Ireland who with her husband Keith has revolutionized the hymn genre with songs such as “In Christ Alone” and “Christ Our Hope in Life and Death.” Their songs are sung by over 100 million people around the globe each year, and they have written or co-published dozens of the top 500 CCLI songs in the US/UK. They have performed for presidents and prime ministers and on stages such as Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, and Sydney Opera House. Today they lead a hymn movement involving a diverse group of writers through the Getty Music Organization and Global Foundation. Keith & Kristyn live between Nashville and Northern Ireland with their four daughters.
