Up on the screen in the old York theater, Dorothy was repeating the mantra, “There is no place like home, there is no place like home, there is no place like home…” as Glinda, the good witch of the north swirls her star-studded wand around the little girl. Soon the scene changes from glorious technicolor to black and white. Dorothy now no longer in Oz is back in her bed on the drab Kansas farm with Auntie Em, trying to wake the poor girl and worried the tornado had harmed her. Still in her dream she is mumbling, “There is no place like home…” I sat there like so many others engrossed by the wildly imaginative story adapted from Frank Baum’s books on the Land of Oz, the classic movie, “The Wizard of Oz”
I think that was the first time I had seen the movie. It was still in the theaters 20 years after its release in 1939. And I was undoubtably one of millions of kids who had sat in theaters around the world watching and hearing those famous words, “There is no place like home!” The problem was I didn’t relate to those words then and did not relate to them for years to come.
What comes to your mind when you picture the word ‘home’? I think for some this would conger up thoughts of a warm house where family is gathered, maybe around a turkey on a snowy Thanksgiving Day. Others maybe envision a high-rise condo in the center of a busy metropolis the hum of cars and people below. I guess the old saying, “Home is where the heart is!” might be the best way to put it.
The problem for me was that most of my life I did not have an image of home. I had no where that my ‘heart’ was attached to. It is not that I have been homeless except for short periods during my ‘drug’ years when I lived on the streets. No, most of my life I have lived in a warm safe place, much like the house I grew up in just outside Chicago, Illinois. But it is that heart connection that has always been missing.
I am not sure how as a kid I never really felt at home even in the comfortable abode my parents provided for me. I was not abused or mistreated in any way. The house a sturdy Cape Cod, was roomy enough for all six of us. But for some reason I always felt like a visitor there and that has not changed much over the years. State after state. City after city. And house after house, you could have posted on my bedroom door ‘Just Visiting’. Was it restlessness? Wanderlust? Peregrination? Maybe all of the above or maybe I have sought and most assuredly without my knowing it, for a home where my heart could be filled in a way nothing or no one ever could, except Jesus Christ!
I remember hearing this the first time I listened to the Bible all the way through many years ago now:
“In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” (John 14: 2–3).
I thought at the time, “Who wants to live in a mansion?” I have a hard time feeling comfortable living in a nice little home on a tree-lined street. Safe and snug. Then came the thought, “Are there mansions in heaven?” The problem was that then and many times since, I was concentrating on the wrong words. It wasn’t that Jesus was promising us some rich man’s place to live. No, he was promising us that he would return to take us to HIS home. To be with HIS Father. And if my faith, my heart was in HIM I would finally find an eternal home where my heart could be forever.
I have to say, I struggled with the faith part. I had never trusted anyone enough to feel at ‘home’ even after years of living in a house with them. To me the idea of a permanent home in a Holy Land seemed as foreign as living in Timbuktu. It was not until a had enough courage and inspired faith to read these words in a book I refused to even listen to for the first three years of my conversion experience, the book called Revelation, that I knew there was a home where my heart belonged:
“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.He will wipe away all tears from their eyes. There will be no more death, no more grief or crying or pain. The old things have passed away.” (Revelation 21: 3-4)
That was the home I was searching for all my life! I felt my heart say this is where you belong! But I also knew that to get there I could not just click my heels three times and repeat with Dorothy, “There is no place like home!” I needed to hang on to the one who already went ahead of me to prepare a mansion just for me. I needed to remember the most important verse that begins the 14th chapter of the book of John:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God and believe also in me.” (John 14:1)
When my heart was there, I knew I finally found a HOME. And the cool thing is that there is a mansion for each of us. Today if you live in an earthly mansion, a hovel or even on the streets. Just know, this earth is not our home. If YOUR heart is with Jesus, there is No Place Like Home!
Blessings
John
7/7/20
