search

“Go and make a careful search for the child.” —King Herod

Although, these statements were made with evil intentions, they do have something to say to us. Those words are worth listening to. And I think they may even be more relevant to us today. “Go and make a careful search for the child.”

The same goes with our lives. Some of us need to go and make a careful search for our lives. The life we are leading may not be the life you had dreamed of. You may even smirk at the thought of even calling what you are doing a life. You may not feel like what you are doing is living. Perhaps it feels more like survival, struggle, or just getting through the day. A life lived simply to survive is no life lived at all. A day lived with the hopes of just getting through it and putting it behind you is no day worth living.

How do we move from simply surviving the day to living a life that is fully alive? And what does that even mean? Our culture has become more and more saturated with the idea of living a life that is fully alive. And I think the reason for that is that more and more people are realizing that they are a good ways from doing so. It’s as if we have all been awakened to the fact that we are living a pace of life that is killing us. We are distracted and hurried at every turn. There is no peace. There is no stillness. There is no life. We are learning this. And in this learning we are beginning to declare louder and louder that we want off this wheel. We want out of this race of rats.

There are too many times when life passes us by and we never realize it. We become preoccupied with other things that we have been distracted by. All the while life moves by and we don’t realize it. We have become enamored and curious about fake life. Instead-of-life. We value the things that are worthless and choose to sell all we have to acquire those things that are leaky vessels, at best. The life we want, we’ve caught glimpses of it. We know it is there. Our soul has sensed its presence.

The life we are looking for is tied tightly to the person of Jesus.   Jesus was the Master of living life. Nobody lived life like Jesus did. And if we are going to find life, I’d suggest we start looking a little more closely for Jesus. Not Christianity, not religion, not morality, but looking for Jesus.   It is not about learning to smile no matter what or to try to be as nice as you can be. If following Jesus is about learning to smile and be nice all the time. I am not interested. Following Jesus is about life and life is about Jesus. Jesus is life. The life we desire so desperately is wrapped up in the person of Jesus.

And it’s not simply the idea of Jesus that we need, or even only the correct beliefs about him. The core of what we need is found in the companionship…a companionship with Jesus. A with-ness. Jesus chose the twelve that they might be with him. It is being with Jesus that is the source of the life we want.

Like Mary and Joseph realizing that Jesus was not with them, they went back to look for him. It had only been one day. For some of us it has been longer than a day since we last saw Jesus, or even thought about him. For some of us it has been days, months, years, or even entire lifetimes.

In the rushing flow of our days. In all of the noise, busyness, and productivity of life, maybe we just forgot about him. And one day you look up and consider the distance between the two of you. How long has it been for you since you last noticed the presence of Jesus in your life? Perhaps you should leave and hurry back to Jerusalem and search for him.

Hurry. Run! There is no time to lose.

Still, there are some of us that have realized our need to return to Jerusalem and find Jesus, and we go back in search of him. But instead of finding Jesus, we become distracted by other things on our way. Or, we go back and only find religious routine and we pack it up neatly and bring it back with us, only to realize we have grabbed the wrong guy. Perhaps we grabbed ‘ministry’ instead of Jesus, or confused the two, as if they were the same.

Keep it simple. Have a companionship…a deep, intimate, friendship with Jesus. Walk and talk with him as you go…as you “walk along the road” of your day. It happens in the journey. It wasn’t meant to be divided into a 30 minutes segment of your day and then you’re off to do your thing. Go with Jesus. In your mind’s eye, imagine he is right there with you (and if you know him…he is), he is sitting next to you in your car, he is waiting in line at the store with you, he is with you as you work, etc. The main thing is just talk to him. Tell him about it…whatever is on your mind…tell him. Then listen for what he might say back.