Luke 2:41-52
What do you need from God that would change your life?
Many things have happened in our lives in the past twelve months. Many changes have come to us, to our communities, to our faith communities and nation. Many of the changes have been blessings; families have spent more time together and gotten to know more about each other’s lives. We have spent more time sharing our meal times talking with one another. Many of the changes have created pain and sorrow in our lives. We have seen people living in fear of the virus that spread from China to all the world. We have seen many of our fellow citizens die from this virus. We have seen people lose their jobs, businesses, homes, and freedoms to have contact with family members. It costs us the opportunity to worship, go to theaters, attend sporting events, and many other things we were doing before the virus.
We should have bonded together to fight as a people in ways that could have saved the lives of fellow citizens, but the virus became a political weapon that produced deep divisions in our country. What do we need in the coming year to help us recover the things that have been lost from our lives because of this virus?
In today’s scripture, we see the only story found in the Bible about Jesus when he was just a youth. It is about his growing and learning about his heavenly Father’s plan for his life.
“Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. When Jesus was twelve years old, they attended the festival as usual. After the celebration was over, they started home to Nazareth, but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t miss him at first because they assumed, he was among the other travelers. But when he didn’t show up that evening, they started looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they couldn’t find him, they went back to Jerusalem to search for him there. Three days later they finally discovered him in the temple sitting among the religious teachers, listening to them and asking questions. All who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.
His parents didn’t know what to think. ‘Son’, his mother said to him, ‘Why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been frantic searching for you everywhere.’
‘But why did you need to search?’ he asked. ‘Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ But they didn’t understand what he meant.
Then he returned to Nazareth with them and he was obedient to them. And his mother stored all these things in her heart. Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people.”
Many of us, as parents, know the nightmare of young children wandering away from us in a big store, camp, or even from home. Our reaction is to search and seek for the lost child, out of our love for them. Jesus’ parents sought Jesus when he stayed behind in Jerusalem because he was their child and their action was out of love for him.
Jesus did what he did because he was seeking God’s purpose and plan for the life that the heavenly Father had given him. He asked his parents, “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”
From this time in his life at the age of twelve until about age thirty, “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and all the people.” At the age of thirty, Jesus would lay aside his carpenter tools and his work with an earthly father. He would begin the earthly ministry that God, his heavenly Father, had been preparing him to do since his birth. His life work would be to offer God’s saving love. The power of that saving love would be offered to us sinners. That love comes to us when we seek God’s forgiving love. In forgiveness, we experience God’s love that heals our sad and broken lives. This love comes from the heart of God that wants us to receive His mercy and grace. His saving love comes from Jesus’ accepting the cross and death to gain the eternal resurrected life that God offers to us believers. It is this love that can change the pain, bitterness, and anger that you have in your life right now. God’s son lived out the power of saving love. In 2021, that power still enables you to start a new life from the time you tell your father that you accept His forgiveness and love that heals your broken life. You must accept the new life given out of love for a sinner like us.
In her book, ‘52 Hymn Story Devotions’, Lucy Neeley Adams gives us insight into the poem, ‘Jesus Loves Me’. This simple childlike song had its beginnings in a very short poem. It was a short poem in a long novel written by Anna Bartlett Warner. The novel, “Say and Seal” was co-authored with her sister in 1860. One of the characters in the book speaks the words of loving assurance to a dying child: “Jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
“A well-known composer and publisher of gospel hymns, William Bradbury, discovered this poem and developed it into the version we all know and love today. Feeling the simple power of its message, he added the chorus in 1861 which emphasizes its theme: ‘Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! The bible tells me so.’” Karl Barth, one of the greatest theologians in the past century, said that these two lines capture the depths of the Christian gospel.
Lucy Neeley Adams made this observation, “With God’s love flowing through me, my simple deeds become mighty acts of God that produce abundant life. Let this love live in each day of your life in this New Year. This saving love will take away your pain and brokenness and enable you to live with joy for you know, ‘Jesus loves us, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong; they are weak, but he is strong. Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.”
