Searching for Jesus
Read Luke 2:41-52.
Most parents have, at one time or another, experienced the fear that comes with thinking you've lost your child. For us, it was at a Target store. We turned around and Christopher was gone. Cathy, the clear-thinking one, immediately notified the store management and they locked the store down. We went from aisle to aisle, each empty aisle inducing more panic, until we found him. He was off by himself; something had caught his attention and he had wondered off. He was fine, he said. Why didn't we know where he was?
After coming down off the ceiling, we had a talk with him about wandering off and how he needed to stay with us, especially in large stores or unfamiliar places. We reminded him of "stranger danger," and Christopher, ever the extrovert, often reminded us that strangers were just "friends he hadn't met yet."
Sigh.
I wonder if Joseph and Mary felt the same way after finding Jesus. He, after all, had been missing for at least three days. After noticing he wasn't with the group headed back to Nazareth, they had, in a panic no doubt, headed back to Jerusalem. From Luke's account, it seems they spent a day or so looking everywhere in the city except in the one place Jesus was: the Temple. From Jesus' standpoint, it should have seemed obvious to them where he would be. "Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?" (2:49). And so they should have. But it seems it never occurred to them to look there until they had looked everywhere else.
And isn't that the way it often is? We live in a world that is searching for something, it knows not what. People look everywhere they can for the peace they desire: drugs, alcohol, sex, money, power...all to find that each and every one of those things are empty. They are loveless lords. However, sometimes it seems, we have to search everywhere else before we realize that what we are searching for is not there. It's been said that no one can truly come to Christ until they come to the end of themselves, and that to be found we have to first realize we are lost. There are people who, like Mary and Joseph, are searching everywhere they can think of—and finding all sorts of things that, in the long run, do not satisfy.
What Mary and Joseph needed was a guide, someone who could help them find Jesus. What if someone had come alongside them and said, "I saw him yesterday at the Temple. Let's go see if he's still there"?
I know the importance of a guide. During my first trip to Israel in 1995, a group of us pastors took off on a side trip away from the main crowd because another pastor knew of a shop which sold stoles (the thing that many pastors wear around their shoulders with a pulpit robe) which were handmade and whose sale supported orphans. So off we went, through the crowded, busy Old City streets, in search of this shop. I had never been there before, as I mentioned, and did not realize how chaotic the Old City can be, so pretty quickly I became disoriented and, well, lost. I didn't know where the shop was and I didn't know where the rest of the group was. But, like a man, I kept walking in the direction I had been going (and of course didn't stop to ask for directions) when all of a sudden, there was another one of our pastors. "It's this way, hurry up!" And so I followed, thankful for a guide. (Yes, we did find the shop, bought some stoles which I still treasure, and safely made it back to the rest of the group.)
What folks who are wandering today need is a guide, someone who knows where Jesus is and can point them to the only one who will truly satisfy. Who do you know who is searching for Jesus (even if they don't realize it)? What is your part in helping with that search? Be a guide, and help them find the one who will love them more than anything and anyone else.
Most parents have, at one time or another, experienced the fear that comes with thinking you've lost your child. For us, it was at a Target store. We turned around and Christopher was gone. Cathy, the clear-thinking one, immediately notified the store management and they locked the store down. We went from aisle to aisle, each empty aisle inducing more panic, until we found him. He was off by himself; something had caught his attention and he had wondered off. He was fine, he said. Why didn't we know where he was?
After coming down off the ceiling, we had a talk with him about wandering off and how he needed to stay with us, especially in large stores or unfamiliar places. We reminded him of "stranger danger," and Christopher, ever the extrovert, often reminded us that strangers were just "friends he hadn't met yet."
Sigh.
I wonder if Joseph and Mary felt the same way after finding Jesus. He, after all, had been missing for at least three days. After noticing he wasn't with the group headed back to Nazareth, they had, in a panic no doubt, headed back to Jerusalem. From Luke's account, it seems they spent a day or so looking everywhere in the city except in the one place Jesus was: the Temple. From Jesus' standpoint, it should have seemed obvious to them where he would be. "Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?" (2:49). And so they should have. But it seems it never occurred to them to look there until they had looked everywhere else.
And isn't that the way it often is? We live in a world that is searching for something, it knows not what. People look everywhere they can for the peace they desire: drugs, alcohol, sex, money, power...all to find that each and every one of those things are empty. They are loveless lords. However, sometimes it seems, we have to search everywhere else before we realize that what we are searching for is not there. It's been said that no one can truly come to Christ until they come to the end of themselves, and that to be found we have to first realize we are lost. There are people who, like Mary and Joseph, are searching everywhere they can think of—and finding all sorts of things that, in the long run, do not satisfy.
What Mary and Joseph needed was a guide, someone who could help them find Jesus. What if someone had come alongside them and said, "I saw him yesterday at the Temple. Let's go see if he's still there"?
I know the importance of a guide. During my first trip to Israel in 1995, a group of us pastors took off on a side trip away from the main crowd because another pastor knew of a shop which sold stoles (the thing that many pastors wear around their shoulders with a pulpit robe) which were handmade and whose sale supported orphans. So off we went, through the crowded, busy Old City streets, in search of this shop. I had never been there before, as I mentioned, and did not realize how chaotic the Old City can be, so pretty quickly I became disoriented and, well, lost. I didn't know where the shop was and I didn't know where the rest of the group was. But, like a man, I kept walking in the direction I had been going (and of course didn't stop to ask for directions) when all of a sudden, there was another one of our pastors. "It's this way, hurry up!" And so I followed, thankful for a guide. (Yes, we did find the shop, bought some stoles which I still treasure, and safely made it back to the rest of the group.)
What folks who are wandering today need is a guide, someone who knows where Jesus is and can point them to the only one who will truly satisfy. Who do you know who is searching for Jesus (even if they don't realize it)? What is your part in helping with that search? Be a guide, and help them find the one who will love them more than anything and anyone else.
I have a hard time understanding how people make it through life without Jesus leading the way (if we’ll listen and follow).
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