Well, it&8217;s Christmas season again. For most of us that means a lot more interaction with our family than usual.

There are Christmas gifts to buy, cards to send, and trips to be made.

For some this is a welcome break from our hectic routine.

Home should be a place of rest and comfort, a place we can run to for refuge. Between the comfort of the coming of Christ and the joy of seeing loved ones, perhaps we merry gentlemen (and women!) can find true rest this season.

But home isn&8217;t always so comfortable and neither is this season.

For many, the holidays can be the least wonderful time of the year, the time when everyone we know and love leaves for their home, leaving us to contemplate our own loneliness.

Perhaps a loss in the family has left a hole that mars our joy. Or maybe we are painfully reminded that our family home is destroyed and we have nowhere to go.

Mark 10:29-30 holds a curious reminder for all of us this season.

In verses 29 and 30 he writes &8220;I tell you the truth,&8221; Jesus replied, &8220;no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel

will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields&045;and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life,&8221; emphasis mine.

Jesus was reminding Peter that he had not left his family. Instead his true spiritual family was about to grow exponentially.

Our family has been fundamentally altered by the coming of Christ. All believers are truly being made into one body, one family.

This is important for us to remember as we cross off our Christmas lists and pack our cars.

Let us not forget our brothers and sisters who struggle during this season. Consider inviting someone home to your family celebration. Make a special contribution to help those who are neediest among us. Or better yet go and visit them.

How better to celebrate the gift of Christ&8217;s birth than to give the gift of your love to those around you this season?

Adam Robinson is an itinerant preacher and teacher living in Chelsea who speaks at Christian churches, conferences and camps. He also facilitates a community Bible study group