Three Days Searching

“Have you seen our boy? Twelve years old. Dark hair. He was with the cousins, we thought.” Every parent knows that feeling. The sudden cold in the stomach. Where is he?

Every year Mary and Joseph made the long journey from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. It took several days on foot, and they did not go alone. Whole villages travelled together, with grandparents and uncles and aunts and crowds of children, singing the psalms of ascent as they climbed toward the holy city. This year Jesus is twelve, almost a man by the customs of his people. Jerusalem is packed with pilgrims. The feast lasts a week. And when it is over, the great caravan sets off for home.

Mary and Joseph walk a whole day's journey north. They are not worried. A twelve-year-old in a big travelling group of relatives and friends could be anywhere: up ahead with the young men, back with the cousins. But when evening comes and the families gather to camp, they look for him among their relatives and acquaintances. They ask. They search. He is not there. No one has seen him since Jerusalem.

So they turn back. A day's walk back to the city, and then a frantic search through crowded streets and markets. One day. Two days. Imagine Mary at night, unable to sleep. This is the child the angel promised. The child she had carried to Egypt and back. And she has lost him. On the third day, they climb up into the temple courts. And there he is. Sitting among the teachers of the law, listening to them, and asking them questions. Luke says that all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and his answers.

His parents are amazed too, but Mary's relief comes out the way it does for every parent. “Son, why have you treated us this way? Behold, your father and I were anxiously looking for you.” And Jesus answers with the first words of his that Luke records. “Why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?” Mary had said, your father. Jesus gently speaks of another Father. Luke adds, honestly, that they did not understand what he meant. Even Mary and Joseph were still learning who this boy really was.

The law of Moses called every Jewish man to appear before the Lord three times a year, at Passover, Pentecost and the Feast of Tabernacles. Later Jewish teaching, collected in the Mishnah, says that at thirteen a boy becomes responsible for keeping the commandments. So at twelve, Jesus was on the edge of that step. Jewish teachers in the temple courts did teach openly, and questions and answers were the normal way to learn.

Three Days Searching. You'll find it in Luke chapter two, verses forty-one to fifty. A lost boy who was never really lost, because he was exactly where he belonged. So here is a question to carry with you. Where do you go to listen to God and ask him your questions?