Luke 2

    This tiny baby, tucked away in Bethlehem, rocked the world from the moment he appeared. Angels filled heaven and earth with praises to him, shepherds left their flocks to see him, wise men traveled hundreds of miles to worship him, King Herod tried his best to kill him, and under God’s direction Mary and Joseph fled in the middle of the night to protect him.

So you should look for the LORD before it is too late; you should call to him while he is near. The wicked should stop doing wrong, and they should stop their evil thoughts. They should return to the LORD so he may have mercy on them. They should come to our God, because he will freely forgive them. The LORD says, “My thoughts are not like your thoughts. Your ways are not like my ways. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts. Rain and snow fall from the sky and don’t return without watering the ground. They cause the plants to sprout and grow, making seeds for the farmer and bread for the people. The same thing is true of the words I speak. They will not return to me empty. They make the things happen that I want to happen, and they succeed in doing what I send them to do.” ISAIAH 55:6-11

    Yet we know very little about Jesus’ early years. He probably grew up playing among the shavings of Joseph’s carpenter’s bench. He likely learned to read and write in the synagogue, along with the other boys in the neighborhood. Like other Jewish families, Jesus and Mary and Joseph celebrated the Jewish feast days.

    The spring after his twelfth birthday Jesus accompanied his family to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast. Crowds filled the narrow streets and temple courts. Thousands of families gathered inside the colonnades. The outer court was more than two football fields long, so it was easy to get lost in the crowd.

    After the feast, the boy who would be Savior slipped away from Mary and Joseph, but he wasn’t lost. He found the temple teachers and spent hours talking with the priests and instructors. As a boy on the edge of manhood, he listened and questioned. The amazed temple teachers had no idea who he was, but he knew.

    When his parents found him, Jesus was in deep discussion with the teachers. Perhaps he was asking questions designed to help them accept the coming Messiah. Even as a young man, Jesus knew who his father was, and he was already bent on doing what his Father had sent him to do.

Reflection: The teachers missed their chance. They were sitting with the Messiah, looking into the face of the God who created their world and everything in it, and they didn’t know it. Years later at least a few of them must have remembered the moment and regretted what they missed. How tragic for them — or for us — to be in the presence of God, to hear his words, to speak with him, and never recognize his presence.

 

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Title: "The Boy Who Would Be King"
Author: Ron Rose
Publication Date: September 29, 2003