There’s No Place Like Home…

While flying back across the ocean from our vacation, I was peering out of the window of the Boeing 767 we were on from an altitude of about 32,000 feet. Sandwiched there between two layers of clouds, I felt like I could step directly into the heavenly realm, right there and then. The sun glistened off of the billowing peaks, as though they were great marshmallow mountains. There was a peaceful serenity as we glided through their expanse. As I surveyed the enormity of the never-ending horizon, I kept thinking about “going home”. I was really missing it, and God gently reminded me that it was only my temporary address while on this earth.

In the 1939 movie “The Wizard of Oz”, Judy Garland [Dorothy] was thrust into the fantasy land of Oz when a twister picked up the house she was in and landed it in another place and time. She set out on a journey with her dog Toto to find the Emerald City. There she hoped to meet the Wizard of Oz, the one person who could guide her home. Her intentions were to ask him to help her return to Kansas. But of course, the wizard was only a mortal man, not the all-powerful one she had imaged. Once she had in her possession the magical “ruby slippers”, it was a matter of clicking her heals together and repeating over and over (with eyes shut), “There’s no place like home.”

As believers, our time on earth is “as a vapor” (James 4:14). Our true home is an eternal abode –   a permanent residence; incorruptible and without confinement.  Paul states in I Thessalonians 4:16-17, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.”

Dorothy was searching diligently for the Emerald City in the land of Oz. But we long for “a city which has foundations, whose builder and maker is God”. We journey towards the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, a city with streets of pure gold and walls of jasper. She sought after the wizard of Oz for direction, but we look towards our Creator – Almighty God, the Shepherd of our souls for our guidance. Our “ruby slippers” are the shoes of salvation, dipped in the precious blood of Christ Jesus. Our path home was secured by a loving God Who sacrificed His own son that we might gain access to His Glory forever through Him.

As we journey through this life, let us remember to “look up and lift our heads, for our redemption draws near” (Luke 21:28). Christ’s second coming is closer that it once was. The angelic host will shout, “Welcome home!”  Then, Jesus Himself will say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of your Lord.”     There’s no place like home…

There’s No Place Like Home…