Prepare for Easter

Monday, April 6, 2020

About My Father’s Business:

A Lenten Devotional Guide

And He was teaching daily in the temple; but the chief priests and the scribes and the leading men among the people were trying to destroy Him.

Luke 19:47 NASB

John Wesley was reported to have been asked what he would do if he knew that sometime tomorrow he would die. He is said to have pulled a little pad from his pocket and to have begun to read the list of things he had planned for the remainder of the day and for the beginning of the next. That’s a wonderful story of a man who obediently planned his days in accordance with his understanding of guidance. Nothing would change. He would do what he had already prayerfully planned as long as he lived. Obviously, Jesus was his model.

Jesus had, since he was twelve, been about his Father’s business. Now he had entered in great triumph into Jerusalem, but he did not waste a moment of his precious time enjoying the adulation. He goes right back to work, teaching daily. I want to say this is the God side of him, but I know that is giving myself an excuse that is unwarranted! Right up to the moment he died, he was totally obedient to his Father, obedient as a man. His heart must have been heavy. We know that he knew what was to come because he told the disciples about it, including the painful betrayal. We know he was agonizing, and we are given some insight into the depth of that agony as we read the Gethsemane event. But he never stops the work he came to do. On Monday after Palm Sunday, he goes back to teaching.

Jesus exhibits an obedience we admire and should strive for, knowing we won’t attain it this side of eternity.

Father, The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. Help us to become obedient children, as obedient as you can make us this side of heaven. 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