About His Father's Business

I was reading in the second chapter of Luke this morning, and I was struck in a new way by the section where the twelve year old Jesus was left behind in the temple.

How often do we, as Christians, do the same thing as Jesus' mother and father? How often do we go with Him on "spiritual" business, maybe a yearly missions trip or conference, and, when we are finished, simply turn around and go, expecting that Jesus will come with us, that the depths of His presence that we felt will stay constant, no matter where we are?

It is never long, maybe a day or a week or a month, before we realize that He is not where we thought that He was. He has no followed us, not back into our accomplishment focused American lifestyle. He has not done what we thought that He would.

Like His parents did, we search for Him until we find Him, back in the place that we came from. We chide Him and show him the bruises on our knees from constant prayer and the well worn pages of our Bibles, thumbed over in day after day of faithful reading, all of it our anxious attempt to search for Him. We expect an explanation, surely He meant to come back with us, and something merely hindered Him.

But, instead of comforting us or commending our faithful search, He simply looks back at us, our frazzled, worried selves, and asks two simple questions.

"Why did you seek me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?"
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Next time that you feel like you have lost Jesus somewhere along the road, go back, and look for Him among the last, the least, and the lonely. He will be there, going about His Father's business.

Luke 2:41-50