Prepare for Easter

Thursday February 27, 2020

About My Father’s Business:

A Lenten Devotional Guide

Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. Luke 2:52 NIV

Obedience is not a characteristic that comes easily to people. If you don’t think that is true, consider how Frank Sinatra’s song, “I Did It My Way,” still lingers in our minds and is even sung and quoted by a generation that never knew him.

We express our rejection of authority all the time. “Don’t tell me what to do!” “I have a right to my own opinion.” “I can’t help being this way. It’s how I’m made.” Meanwhile, God’s Word says to us, “In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your path.”

Jesus submitted himself to his parents as he was learning to submit himself to God (and he was learning to do this, but that is thought for tomorrow). He had arrived at some understanding of who he was, but he went home to Nazareth with his parents, learning obedience that would later take him into a garden where every fiber of his being would be challenged but where he would finally and absolutely commit himself to the will of his Father.

William Barkley says that Jesus had a growing awareness of who he was, and our first indication of that from the Bible’s text was when he was twelve, standing in the temple with his parents. Part of what he learned in that growing awareness was obedience to his earthly parents.

I wonder if we have a growing awareness of who we are. Does obedience fit into our maturity as disciples of Christ? And are we “about our Father’s business” or doing as we please?

Father, make us more like Jesus – willingly obedient.  Amen

About My Father’s Business:

A Lenten Devotional Guide
prepared for First United Methodist Church of Homosassa, Florida
Spring 2010
by Patience Nave, Christian Education Coordinator