Most of us are familiar with the children’s tale about a little girl from a farm in Kansas who gets whisked away by a tornado to another world; an imaginary world of yellow brick roads, a wise wizard, talking animals, flying monkeys, good fairies, munchkins and wicked witches.  Yes, the 1939 movie The Wizard of Oz has been one of those timeless classics that continue to entertain kids of all ages. Even the song, “Somewhere over the Rainbow”, is etched in our memories, a song of longing for hope, encouraging listeners to keep dreaming and believing in a better future.  Of course, Dorothy, the little girl in the story realizes in the end of the movie that what she longed for: acceptance, love and family was not over the Rainbow, like some magical place called Oz, it was always where she belonged, her farm in Kansas.  After all, there is no “place like home”.  

Sometimes as Christians we too need a reminder that the things we long for, our acceptance, love, godliness, our home, we already have it.  It’s found in Christ.  For most of us let’s face it, when we first accept Christ as our Savior, we become “Somewhere over the Rainbow” Christians.  We sing of better days, long for what will be in the sweet bye and bye, we strive to be right with God, we hope and pray for what we think we don’t have like patience, love, godliness and we spend most days dreaming for a home away from home, anticipating our mansion up in the sky.  Yes it is true we don’t have the perfectly spiritual bodies yet and there will one day be a new heaven and earth and that is something to look forward to but we have so much we’ve been given now!  We don’t have to be chasing after rainbows when all along everything we need is right inside of us.  You don’t have to wait till you die, in fact you already have died.  The Bible says that we have been crucified with Christ, Galatians 2:20.  Romans 6:3-7 tells us, we died to the sinful nature when Christ died, we were baptized or immersed in His death, buried and rose again with Him through the Holy Spirit.  When He died the Old nature died too and we were given new life.  2 Peter tells us, “His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness.  By these he has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires.”  Do you see it?  He has given us, past tense it’s already done.  What has He given us?  His divine nature!  Christian, your nature is not changing little by little, you are changed!  Then in verses 5-7, Peter exhorts us, “For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with goodness, goodness, with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self control with endurance, endurance, with godliness, godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love.”  Most of us read that and see the words effort, we see the words, supplement or in some translations, it says to add to your faith and then we go back into “Somewhere over the Rainbow” Christians following the yellow brick road of doing more, reading our Bibles, praying harder trying to sin less to avoid the flying monkeys and the Wicked Witch.  We seek God like He’s some far away Wizard and somewhere along the way if we prove ourselves worthy by our diligence, He will give us a medal, a badge for our courage, and ruby slippers for our feet.  The truth is we are to make every effort but it’s not to produce the virtues, it’s the same way we received faith, not by works but by grace.  We make every effort to know Christ and make every effort to remind ourselves, renew our minds that we have been given everything required and needed for life and godliness!  It’s already been given to us!  Make every effort not to work for it but to rest in the fact that just like faith is a gift, we have also been supplied with all the other virtues, the fruit of the Spirit.  It comes with our new nature and the only way for us to know this is to believe his promises that this is already true of us!  All Dorothy had to do to get home, was not to click her heels but to wake up from her dream and see she never left to begin with, and everything she longed for was there all along.  And that is true for us too!  Stop skipping along the yellow brick road of trying to overcome in your own effort the lions, tigers and bears of this life, and just remind yourself, that in Christ you have everything inside of you already.  You don’t have to wait till you die, you already have died and now Christ who is your life, dwells in you and everything that is in Him is now in you.  The many rooms that He said He was building was not some mansion, some pie in the sky, it was You! Wake up from your dreaming and into the reality that you are now His abode and He is your abode and together, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”.