Thinking He Was Among Them….

While reading Luke 2 during Christmas, I found myself reading past the “baby Jesus” part until I came to verse 44. I stopped dead in my reading as the Holy Spirit moved my heart to focus on the words, “Thinking He was in their company, they traveled on for a day.” The Holman Christian Standard Version says, “Assuming he was in the traveling party…” and the ESV says, “Supposing.” In all of these what we see is that even though the traveling party knew Jesus well, they didn’t know when he was no longer with them.

I love the Lord, and I love being with people who love the Lord. My closest relationships began with Jesus as the point of contact but this verse caused me to wonder if conversations with my friends about Jesus and what He means to us have become less frequent; focusing rather on things like shopping, weight, food, food, and weight! Have we started talking more about other people and how much better they could be if…? We cover our “gossip” by saying we really care---bless their hearts--- but then realize never once did we pray for them and even worse never mentioned Jesus. In a word…we didn’t even realize that he wasn’t there among us. It is then we see our lives have become mundane---at best.

A friend on FaceBook posted this:

Watching a child as they sing, dance and laugh.
Noticing how everything is fun and interesting and an adventure.
Then I ask myself “When did I stop dancing?”

A child dances best when the person they love most is close by! To answer my friend’s question, perhaps we quit paying attention to the important things and drifted away from the One who loves us most and have forgotten who binds us to each other. His guidance keeps us safe…and we dance in the knowledge that none of the enemy’s ploys will destroy us! (As I typed this, I noticed that the word dance is in guidance. Hmmm???)

So what did the traveling party do when they discovered Jesus was not in their company? “They “went back!” They went back to where they had left Him!

You might be thinking that Jesus is so far away…He is no longer in your company and you don’t know how you got to this place of panic and discontent. May I suggest to you to go back to where you last were with Him; the last time He was real in your life. It takes effort to do that but when you find Him again you will be astonished at what you find- just like Mary and Joseph did. Jesus is all about doing His Father’s will and He wants nothing more than to have you join Him in that will but to do that we must intentionally keep Him in our sight and in our mind. He wants to guide us and He wants us to find peace and joy in Him but He will not force it on us.

Don’t travel another day just “supposing” Jesus is among your traveling party. Know He is. Seek Him and make sure that you don’t get too busy in life. Don’t assume that as you walk away that Jesus will follow. He doesn’t follow us…we follow Him.

Stay warm, friends,…spring is coming.