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Good morning. The courage of Alex Batty, the 17 year old who disappeared six years ago, is remarkable. Having decided he wanted to return to the UK, he took control of his own life and spent four days foraging for food in the Pyrenees as he sought out a British consulate. Equally remarkable is the alertness of Fabien Accidini, the delivery driver who discovered him. With immense insight, he drew out Alex’s story, realised who he was and delivered him to a place of safety. Yet perhaps the most poignant part of the story is the most simple. Alex’s first communication for 6 years with his grandmother read, ‘I love you, I want to come home.’ Behind the drama of flight and rescue is a boy yearning after something many of us can take for granted – a stable and loving home. For others, the stability of any sort of home is a forlorn wish. I was struck last week by a report called ‘Settled at Christmas’ by the charity ‘Become’ which gives a voice to children in the care system. Last year, in the two week Christmas period, well over 2000 children were moved or entered the care system, many of them housed far from home. The emotional impact on these highly vulnerable young people is immense and can last a lifetime. ‘I usually dread Christmas,’ said one. And another, ‘Christmas just reminds me I don’t have a normal family.’ For children especially, this should be a season of joy. But for the nation’s most vulnerable young people, Christmas is the time when they are confronted with their instability. It reminds them they have nowhere to call home. For the Christian, the events that we remember over the next week can speak powerfully into this situation. Through the birth of Jesus, God enters into human instability. He knows what it is to be moved from place to place, to be a refugee, to be homeless. But then having entered into human instability, Jesus does something about it. He gathers people around him. He builds a community of love. He creates space for those who have nowhere else to belong. Still today, Jesus makes a home both with and for his followers, one that anticipates that future home which is God’s eternity. I am, of course, only too aware that this language of home will ring hollow for many because it is something they have barely ever experienced. Stable networks of loving relationships and a settled community are integral to human flourishing, yet are so often undermined by short-term thinking. Maybe the homeless God of Christmas can challenge people to ask what our collective responsibility is for children who, like Alex Batty, just want to come home.