Missing Jesus

 Luke 2 tells the story of Jesus' parents returning from their trip to Jerusalem and discovering at the end of the day that Jesus wasn't with them. They had been there to observe the Passover festival, a high and most holy time for the Jews. The Scripture reads, "His parents didn't miss Him at first because they assumed He was with friends among the other travelers." They went an entire without Jesus in their company and didn't know it. In effect, they'd just "been to church" yet didn't sense the absence of His presence. I think they have a lot of company in that regard. Think too on how easily it is for this to happen. They assumed He was with them. He wasn't, but it took a full day for them to realize it. It can take us a lot longer.

John Bevere once said that "The Holy Spirit comes very powerfully but leaves very quietly." I'm not saying that Jesus abandons, forsakes, or walks away from anyone. His Word is true. He will not leave or forsake us, but there are 1001 ways and more for us to drift from Him. There is a vast difference between having a general sense of His presence and a deeply intimate one. With the first, it's very easy to walk through life assuming that He's involved in everything we're doing, overseeing everything that's going on. There is a wide gap between His overseeing things in our lives and His seeing through our lives. The latter is what true intimacy is about.

Joseph and Mary immediately returned to Jerusalem and when they found Jesus in the Temple, rebuked Him for staying behind, causing them worry and the need to search for Him. His answer to them was, "But why did you need to search? .....You should have known I'd be in My Father's House." We can read this and think this means we're to be found constantly in a church building, especially every Sunday. The "house" Jesus was speaking of was not a building, but a heart. His Father's heart. That was where He lived, moment by moment. Oswald Chambers asks, "Do I look upon life as being in my Father's house? Is the Son of God living in His Father's house in me?" Is the heart of the Father being lived out in my heart and in yours? This is much more than His having a general presence around us while leaving all the details of life to us. One translation reads, "Didn't you know that I must be about My Father's business?" The business of the Father will only be our business to the degree He lives through our reality moment by moment. Otherwise we can be sure, and our lives will give the evidence, that we're about no one's business but our own.

Chambers asks, "Am I always in contact with His reality....or only when things have gone wrong? If it's the latter, we can be sure we'll be among those traveling along, assuming our connection is vital and deep but panicking when a crisis hits and discovering such a connection doesn't exist. He is there, but since our lives aren't really found in the Father's heart, His peace, hope, joy, hope, strength, and life are near impossible to lay hold of. We've drifted from all of them as we drifted from Him. So we search, and His word to each of us is the same, why did we need to search when He's already told us where He'll be found? In His Father's house. His Father's heart. He invited us, you and me, to join Him there. Do we come, or do we continue to "miss Jesus" in our journey?

Blessings,
Pastor O