Missing in Action--Luke 2:39-51

Luke 2:39-51 

Random Thoughts:

Who hasn’t experienced the panic of losing a child or of being a child lost themselves?Ancient families made their pilgrimages in large extended groups of near and not-so-near relations and given the fact that by now Jesus would have had several brothers and sisters (we know he had siblings according to later accounts) it becomes easier to see how Mary and Joseph could have begun their journey home to Nazareth without one of their children. 

Where this story takes a hard right spiritual turn, however, is that this is no ordinary child. The details of the story make this clear. Jesus, now 12 years old, the age of spiritual maturity in Jewish culture, chooses this time and place to make his spiritual knowledge and uncanny wisdom known in the Temple. He is beginning to publicly reveal his identity as God’s son. 

More importantly, it is a full three days before his family thinks to look for him in the temple courts. Three is no arbitrary number; representing divine perfection it is no coincidence that Jesus, “lost” for three days is found not only alive and well but in his father’s house. As if foreshadowing his disappearance for three days in the tomb before resurrecting to reveal his identity as God’s son, Jesus the boy is similarly resurrected. Lost to his family, he is now found and in a place and in circumstances that are demonstrating he is more than anyone can imagine.

More poignant still is the fact that when his parents do finally find him they are dismayed wondering why he was not more considerate of their suffering on his behalf. Like so many of us, wondering why God lets us struggle as we search to know his will, he reminds us (as Jesus did his parents) that he is very much about his Father’s business--even if we can’t see it--and our part in it is so very much a part in it even if we can’t understand it. 

Question:

Mary is anxious in the process of looking for her son but when she finds him, Jesus reminds her that he is in control; he is right where he should be in his Father’s house. Is there something about which you are anxious? Some aspect of God’s provision or plan that has you feeling lost and his way hard to find?

Journal Response: 

Anxiety and parenting seem to go hand in hand like best buddies. They’re like peanut butter and jelly only messier. And stickier. 

But when your kids have a knack for going AWOL in two seconds flat in the crush of mall or grocery store, anxiety becomes far too familiar. I have to admit, it’s kind of nice to know Jesus’ parents experienced it on at least one occasion. 

But as my children grow and become potentially lost in other ways--in the issues they grapple with, the friends they choose, the grades they may or may not be willing to work for, the morals they may or may not be willing to grasp--it becomes clear that just being anxious doesn’t cut it. Only surrendering them to God and his plans for them can I find any shred of hope or peace. And so I plead with him each day to only let them experience what they can handle and to protect them from themselves as they experience whatever it is that life is going to throw at them.

There are times during all of this that God seems so hard to find. So hard to be found. Prayers seem to hit the ceiling while troubling emails from school or from the doctor’s office just keep coming. Add to that the hormonal challenge of being 44 and you have a recipe for an emotional atom bomb. 

But then you get a glimmer of hope. 

Your son turns in a $20 bill he found in a hallway to the school office; your daughter prays for her brother (who she can’t stand) to have a safe trip on his flight; or the “D” you know should have been a “B” on a report card miraculously doesn’t usher in the end of the world like you imagined. 

God is still in control. He doesn’t give up on us and He is always at work. Even when we are looking for him in all the wrong places. The fact is that He is right where He’s supposed to be and doing exactly what He knows is best whether we know it or not. Jesus’ own mother didn’t realize who He was or where to find Him. At least not at first. But she did, at last, find Him. 

So I’ll keep offering up my children and my parenting to Him each morning. I’ll keep going through the motions, doing what I can, one step at a time. My God knows my heart and He knows my children’s. There are no guarantees in life. I know that. No promise of happily ever after. But for three days the world seemed pretty dark to 11 disciples 2000 years ago. And for three days a mother and father were pretty distressed wondering why their son was behaving so badly. We think it’s so personal. That God is doing something to us when all along he is doing something with us. For us. And for others. Jesus isn’t MIA. He is still about his Father’s business. And ours.