MOST parents have been through the emotional wringer of losing a child at the supermarket, in a crowd, on a beach, etc.
At the Sunderland Airshow, among 200,000+ folk I took my eye off eight-year-old Sandy for a split second, and he was gone!
The cold sweat and heartfelt arrow prayers were soon followed by a steely determination to find our boy. He wasn’t at the organisers’ tent, nor in the vicinity of where he disappeared.
As worst-case scenarios clamoured for attention we focussed on the faith and belief that he’d show up and eventually found him near the beach’s lighthouse-like point where we’d told our kids to head for should they get lost. Phew! What relief and gratitude!
Mary and Joseph didn’t realise 12-year-old Jesus wasn’t among the community carts and caravans heading home to Nazareth from Jerusalem till a day down the road.
It was three days till they eventually found him back in Jerusalem’s Temple Courts questioning and sharing with the religious leaders.
I imagine Jesus’ mum and stepdad were ever so slightly infuriated as Jesus responded to their perspiration and exasperation with, “Where’d you think I would be, but in my Father’s House?”
Thirty+ year-old Jesus’ mum and brothers came looking for him again as he taught, healed, and demonstrated his divinity, wanting to stop the stir he was creating and take him home. Again Jesus told them that he was intimately involved in His Father’s family business.
Indeed, it’s a gracious loving, caring, healing, comforting, energising, good news sharing business which Jesus calls us all to join Him in.
It’s still a great question to ask: “Where on earth is Jesus!?”
He can be found in the faces of the least, last, lost and lonely; found among the carers, sharers and neighbour lovers; found in the voices of people speaking up for the dispossessed and silenced; found in places of service and sacrifice; found in the many ways we can point people to Jesus in prayer, word and deed.
I asked Fullarton’s kids yesterday, “Where’s Jesus?”. Two beautiful answers quickly came, “In Heaven” and “In our hearts”.
Truth is that Jesus is everywhere by his invisible Spirit loving people and calling us all to join in, but beware thinking you have Jesus in your pocket, or just where you want him to be.
He’s skilled at disturbing the comfortable as well as comforting the disturbed.
The poem ‘Footprints in the Sand’ beautifully describes the way Jesus can carry us through difficult and troubled times, when the one set of footprints we think are ours turn out to be those of Jesus, as he carries and coories us.
However, there’s another courser version of the poem which can jolt us out of our worship of comfort and cries for an ‘easy life’.
One night I had a wondrous dream, One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of my precious Lord, But mine were not along the shore.
But then some stranger prints appeared, And I asked the Lord, “What have we here?”
Those prints are large and round and neat, “But Lord, they are too big for feet.”
“My child,” He said in sombre tones, “For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith, But you refused and made me wait.”
“You disobeyed, you would not grow, The walk of faith, you would not know,
So I got tired, I got fed up, And there I dropped you on your butt.”
“Because in life, there comes a time, When one must fight, and one must climb,
When one must rise and take a stand, Or leave their butt prints in the sand.”
It’s a great question to ask as we enter 2025, “Where is Jesus?” Let’s keep our eyes, ears, heads, hearts, hands and souls alert and open to where it points and leads! Happy New Year!
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