"In The Things Of My Father"

by J. Miller | Category: Voices From The Past - Extracted From Jottings | Feb 1981

What depths of divine purpose are contained in the question the Lord asked His sorrowing parents: "How is it that ye sought Me? Wist ye not that I must be in the things of My Father?" (Luke 2:49, RVM). In these and for these things He lived.

What had evidently been unobserved in their humble home in Nazareth was a matter of astonishment to the Boy of twelve. Why did they not know? Had they not seen sufficient to convince them that there was one thing after which He from earliest youth thirsted with insatiable desire? even the knowledge of God, which is bound up with the knowledge of His word, His will and His way. Now He had opportunity to drink at deeper wells of knowledge than in the synagogue in Nazareth. In Jerusalem were the doctors of the law, the cream of learned teachers of the Sacred Writings. In the midst of these He would sit and listen and ask them of the ways of the God He loved - Israel's God and His.

Do we wonder that He who said, "I must be' in the things of My Father" grew in wisdom and in grace? Do we too desire spiritual growth, true advancement? Then we must live in the things of God. In His case nothing was allowed to intrude into His life that would turn, even momentarily, His ear from hearing God's voice. Nothing was permitted to engage His thoughts which would conflict with the holy occupation of a mind sanctified from all worldly things. "I must be"; it was imperative, not a passing wish, or fleeting thought, but the fixed purpose of a Boy as to a course from which no deviation was permissible.

In contrast to such an example, we live in a time when "I must be" is regarded as too hard and fast. There is but little regarded to be wrong and consequently little that is truly right. Dogmatic definitions are fast losing shape, and conscience is elastic.

Does it not turn on what the heart is set upon? - upon whom we love and what we love? In what is our delight? Does the echo of our heart answer back to the claims of the divine will - "I delight to do Thy will, 0 My God"? He is the spring whence "I must be" flows with the ease of a flowing stream. Here "I must be" is not viewed as dictatorial; there is nothing here of the compulsion of the prison, or of the subservient will of the slave. It is the glad service of love, the service of free will.

J. Miller | Feb 1981
Voices From The Past - Extracted From Jottings