Never Home Alone
On March 10, 2024 by Elle R.Happy Daylight Savings, dear reader! This week ushers in more sunshine hours, Vitamin D, and fresh air. I’m thankful for this. My previous week included a basketball playing teenager requiring stitches to his eyelid and a toddler with a stomach virus that caused her to projectile vomit like a sorority sister after a prolonged keg stand.
A bright spot for me last week was when I shared about Jesus with two of my children. They always have great observations about the bible that I don’t see. I was reading to them from the book of Luke, the passage where Mary and Joseph travel with twelve year old Jesus to the Passover Feast. For context, God sent the Ten Plagues to Pharaoh to force him to release the Israelites from slavery, the final plague being the Death of the Firstborn. God told the Israelites, via Moses, to place the blood of a lamb over their doors, so the Angel of Death would ‘Pass Over’ them. In the morning, all the first born sons of Egypt were dead, but the Hebrew boys were safe as promised. The Passover Feast is a commemoration of this, and lasts for seven days. Large groups would travel to Jerusalem for this feast. Picture your family and friends walking to an annual week long party.
“Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him.” Luke 2: 41-45, NIV
I was reading this passage aloud to two of my children when all of a sudden my ten year old daughter yells, “KEVIN!” I began laughing. My daughter was referencing the scene in the iconic Christmas movie, Home Alone, where actress Catherine O’Hara’s character, Kate McCallister, realizes she has forgotten her son, Kevin, while she and the rest of the family are en route from the U.S. to France for an extended Christmas holiday. The rest of the movie focuses on Kevin’s adventures without his parents, and their eventual heartwarming reunion.
With my daughter’s help, I will forever see Luke 2:41-45 as Mary and Joseph’s “Home Alone” moment of the bible. I can picture them frantically shouting, “JESUS!” and, “I thought YOU knew who he was with!” “No, I thought YOU knew who he was with!”
Poor Mary and Joseph. They searched for three days until they found Jesus. Imagine their terror, and the self recrimination they were feeling. The absolute anguish. They didn’t lose a ‘regular’ kid. Mary and Joseph lost the MESSIAH. Imagine being entrusted with the savior of THE WORLD, and misplacing him. For three days. Whoops. Then this happened…
“After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them. Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” Luke 2: 46-51.
Poor Mary has been out of her mind with worry, and at first glance, Jesus replies with what seems to be the cluelessness of a pre-teen. It wasn’t. At age twelve, Hebrew boys would take on learning the trade of their father. Jesus’ earthly father was Joseph, and Jesus would go on to learn Joseph’s carpentry trade. More importantly, Jesus was also the son of God, so Jesus was well aware he was in his (heavenly) Father’s house when he began teaching the rabbis.
Reading this passage with my children, I realized we are never “Home Alone” when we are with our Heavenly Father.
My week may have been a bit chaotic, but it didn’t end with a frantic search for a missing child, so for that I am truly thankful.
Chag Pesach samech, dear reader. Happy Passover!
I don’t know how you find the time to write, but this was well written, interesting and I thoroughly enjoyed reading and learning. ❤️
Thank you so much! My post ideas usually percolate in my brain for a week or so, and then when I sit down to write, I often think I know where it’s going, and then many times God steers my writing in a different direction. I have learned that He is the map maker, I am just the hands that write down the directions per se. When I feel the itch to write a love letter for Jesus – I make the time! =) Love you always – Elle