After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. [Luke 2:43-44 (NIV)]
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?” Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.” [John 20:15 (NIV)]
Every year, Jesus and His family went to Jerusalem to celebrate the pilgrimage festival of Passover. Entire villages would travel together and the city was jam packed with worshipers when they departed for Nazareth. The men probably traveled apart from the women and children. Jesus, being twelve and no longer a little boy but not yet a man, could have been with either group. Perhaps Mary thought Him with the men while Joseph thought He was with the children. They didn’t know Jesus wasn’t there until they stopped that night. Moving with the crowd, his parents had mistakenly presumed His presence.
Sometimes, we get so caught up in the crowd’s movement that we fail to make sure Jesus is with us on our journey. We forget that it is the sheep who follow the shepherd and not the other way around. It took Joseph and Mary three days before they found Jesus in His Father’s house doing His Father’s business. Let us learn from them and look there for Him first. Be reassured; it’s never too late to turn back. If we seek Him, He will be found!
On the other hand, some people thought Jesus was absent when He was right in front of them. Never expecting to see a risen Christ, the tearful Mary Magdalene thought Jesus was the gardener. The two walking to Emmaus were unable to recognize the risen Christ because they were in a heated discussion (the Greek word was syzetein meaning “strong debate”) about the meaning of the crucifixion and the empty tomb. Focusing on their sorrow, fear, doubt and confusion, Mary and the travelers didn’t realize they were in His presence!
Even though Jesus is right beside us, there are times in our lives we can’t recognize Him because we’re not looking for Him. Rather than seeking a resurrected Jesus, Mary just wanted to anoint a dead body and the two travelers were looking for answers rather than the Savior. Let’s never settle for anything less than seeing the risen Christ.
There are two mistakes we can make about Jesus: we can think He’s present when we’ve gone off without Him and we can think He’s absent when He’s right beside us. Let’s not make either mistake!
“Work expands to fill the time available for its completion,” is what’s known as Parkinson’s Law. Writing those words in 1955, Parkinson wasn’t talking about deadlines; he was taking aim at the British Civil Service and government bureaucracies that become less efficient as they increase in size. Nevertheless, later studies have shown that without strict time constraints, we tend to waste time and work takes longer than necessary to complete.
In an article about how our post-pandemic new normal will evolve, the author suggested a process for businesses to identify what needs changing in their post COVID-19 world. As a way of illustrating their method, there was an aerial photograph of a college campus quad. Before designing the walkways for this large green area surrounded on four sides by university buildings, the landscape architects simply sodded the field and observed how the students used the grassy expanse. After a while, the beaten down grass indicated the students’ preferred traffic patterns and it was on those favored paths that they finally placed paved walkways. At first glance, the asymmetric sidewalks seemed random but, once the process was explained, the strange arrangement of paths made sense. It was easy to see how they accommodated people’s tendency to take shortcuts and cut across corners.
Although God passed along some very detailed commands, the people of Israel frequently refused to obey them and, in Judges 17-18, we see what happens when people do whatever seems right in their own eyes. After stealing 1,100 pieces of silver from his mother, Micah hears her curse the thief. Fearful of her curse, he confesses and returns the money. After blessing Micah to remove the curse, his mother dedicates the money to the Lord. In honor of her thieving son, however, she gives 200 of those coins to a silversmith for the fashioning of an image (a figure carved from wood overlaid with silver) and an idol (a figure cast from molten silver). Micah then sets up a shrine for the prohibited items, adds some household idols of his own, makes an ephod (a priestly garment), and installs his son as his own personal priest. This was wrong in so many ways: not only were people expressly forbidden from making either carved images or molten idols but only a Levite could serve as a priest!
Between demonstrations that turn into brawls or rioting, incidents of mask rage, shootings, negative and misleading political ads, quarrelsome legislators, nations accusing one another of espionage and fraud, and the assorted armed conflicts throughout the world, I wish we could purchase peace as easily as we can items from Key West’s Peace Store. Actually, given the anger and nastiness so prevalent in the world today, I’m afraid wearing one of their tee-shirts politely requesting “Peace Please” or a face mask with the peace symbol could cause conflict rather than promote peace! Real peace, however, is more than the absence of conflict and it’s not something that can be purchased in Key West or anywhere else.
Devotions of the Heart 