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Many of us have spent a lot of time at home this year: working from home, learning from home, and just plain staying home.

Homes come in many different shapes and sizes.

• In Coober Pedy, a town in the Australian Outback, more than half of the people live underground in dugouts and old opal mines to escape the extreme summer heat.
• Other homes are way up in the sky. At 1,550 feet, Central Park Tower in New York is the tallest residential building in the world.
• In places where flooding occurs, homes are sometimes built on stilts.

Throughout history and around the world, homes can be built from many different materials, including snow, mud, bamboo, and adobe. During the 1800s, settlers on the Midwestern prairies would build homes called soddies from blocks of sod (grass and soil held together by the grass’s roots).

You can visit bit.ly/2GTEsos for a tour of homes around the world.

Some homes are for living in all the time. Others are just for a while. Today, some people might be tired of being stuck at home because of COVID-19, but there are others wishing that they could be at home. Every day around the world some people have to leave their homes behind because of war, natural disasters, or other dangers.

Jesus, the King of kings, was born not in a palace but in a place where animals were kept. Then he lived as a refugee for the first years of his life on earth. Our great God, who made the world and everything in it, loves us so much that he came from heaven to live with us in our messy world: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14).

Jesus lived with us to make a way for us to live with him forever. He died to pay for our sins and then rose again, defeating death. Those who trust in him as their Lord and Savior will have eternal life. In John 14:2-3, Jesus says, “My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.” And we will never get tired of our eternal home with Jesus.