I am managing to focus just a small part of my thoughts about Christmas away from the shopping and the calender which is filling up with ' stuff to do' and think about Jesus. Hope you are too. And one of the things I was thinking this week was about the fact that Jesus spent an awful long time doing nothing very much at all.I wonder what Jesus actually did in his 30 years of preparation time. Presumably he just got on with everyday life. He went to school, to work, to the temple. He got a job, went to weddings and funerals and parties. Had friends, siblings, pets maybe? Im sure His life was in many ways just as normal and boring and mundane as mine is. Which is kind of comforting.
It would appear that from a young age Jesus was aware of who He was and what He was called to do. We see Him as a teenager skipping off from his parents and getting lost. Then giving them the ' I know better than you ' teenage talk And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” Luke 2 ;49
Knowing that you are the Messiah and then having to spend years and years sitting on your hands and biting your tongue........ tricky? I'm thinking yes. I guess there must have been times when He did show Himself for who He really was to His family - at the wedding in Cana ( John 2 ) Mary certainly seems to imply that she knows He is capable of sorting out the odd culinary mishap. He has maybe turned the odd jug of water into wine at home before this. I do hope so,. Mary deserved a few perks for being the Mother of the Son of God dont you think ? :-) Anyway, I digress......
The fact is that we dont hear anything at all about the life of Jesus until He is thirty. And then he has three short years before He is crucified. Three years is nothing. No time at all. Think back to what you were doing in December 2010. Three years ago. What have you achieved since then?
Have you gathered a group of friends so faithful they would die for you?
Have you spoken out against injustice and religious hypocrisy such that people want you dead?
Have you healed multitudes of sick people, released demonised people, spoken face to face with the devil and sweated drops of blood
No, I thought not,
neither have I.
So Im wondering if these two time periods are in some way related. That Jesus's thirty years of waiting, of doing nothing much, of not being ' in the ministry', NOT doing the thing He knew He was called to do....... well maybe those long long thirty years of prayer and waiting and being faithful in the small things were preparation for the three.
This year I will have been a Christian for thirty years. They seem to have been years when not much has happened to be honest. I havent raised a dead person yet ( this is my ambition before I die) I havent made too many disciples, seen too many people healed , fed more than six people with a chicken or walked on water. But WHAT IF 2014 marks the start of my time ? What if the things I have learned over the past thrity years could finally start to be used by God in some significant ways? Of course I havent learned that much - I havent been sitting at the feet of great Bible teachers quizzing them on points of theology for much of the time. Im not the Son of God. But I am a son of God
Who knows? This coming year just might be the end of something and the start of something else.....
Lord Jesus
The more I think about Your life here on earth the more I am thankful. You spent thirty long years being supremely ordinary - just like me. You know what it is like to be nobody special, doing nothing terribly important. And then you spent three spectacular years living your calling only for it all to come to a cruel and brutal end. You hardly had any time at all Lord and yet in those three years you changed everything. For everyone. Forever.
Help me to learn all that I need to learn in my time of preparation. For whatever it is that I am waiting for. And when the time comes let me do that thing with passion and vision and unswerving devotion.
Amen
No comments:
Post a Comment