“Did you not know I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49)
The twelve-year-old Child asked his parents this question after they had been looking for him for three days. Surely Jesus realized that the business of a mother and father is to keep up with their children. But a higher agenda seemed to consume the Son of Mary and Joseph as they visited Jerusalem for the annual Passover Feast.
Perfect humility enabled the King of kings to submit to modest parents in the unimpressive town of Nazareth. The holy Messiah obeyed a young mother and a simple carpenter even though He was Lord of all. The attitude of Christ revealed complete trust: “My circumstances were chosen by my Father in Heaven. He chose my parents, my physical appearance, my hometown, and my social status. My Father knows what He is doing and I gladly accept his will.”
Jesus’ answer in the Temple was neither rebellious or prideful; He simply revealed the priority of the child of God: “I must be about my Father’s business.” Are we not all to think this way?
I was born in a precise location at an exact time on a particular day in 1959. I now live in a certain city and have a God-given job. I have a wife and children and many friends. But is my mind set on the Father’s business? If a person ever asked why I was doing a certain thing, would I ever honestly answer: “Don’t you know this is what God intends for me to do?”
The secret to Jesus’ life is our hope for such focused living: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” (John 14:11) Jesus says to us, “Remain in me, and I will remain in you.” (John 15:4)
Come Lord, live your life in me. “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.” Reveal to my heart what is important to You, and may I be about the Father’s business. Amen.
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’” Acts 17:24-28