Tuesday June 24th :: Luke 2 :: First Words

I’m thinking about the first recorded words of Jesus today.
We come across them here in Luke 2.49.

He says this to his understandably worried parents:

“Why were you searching for me?
…Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

I imagine those words cut deep for Mary and Joseph. I mean, here they are wanting Jesus to act like a good little boy, and here he is reminding them that he has another agenda to accomplish. He won’t be treated like an ordinary snot-nosed kid. He is God’s Son and he must be about his Father’s business.

Just as the first red-letter words were likely tough for Mary and Joseph, perhaps they ought to be a wake-up call to me as well. I often want so badly for God to conform to my agenda, my wants and my desires. And yet he keeps reminding me, as he did with Mary and Joseph, that there are bigger things at stake than just my feelings or my comfort.
Christ is not a genie-in-a-bottle-deity who lives to grant our wishes. He is the Lord of the universe and we must submit to his plan.

That said, I’m left today with Jesus’ first words stuck in my head as if he were asking them of me: “Why were you searching for me?” What are my motives in approaching God? And how must my desires be bent toward his will?

-Theophilus