In Luke 2:46, Jesus has been separated from his parents and is in the temple courts talking to teachers, listening, and asking questions. I have read this story hundreds of time, but this time, I was caught with a thought, would we want our children to be like Jesus? I think we would all want our kids to be like Jesus. We would want them to be at church, talking to the teachers, listening and asking questions. I think we would like Luke 2:51 especially. Can you imagine a twelve year old that obeyed his/her parents?
This whole story sounds like an April Fools joke. Then again, our modern world says that church is boring and that kids don’t like it. If you think church is boring, do you think sitting at the feet of Rabbis in the temple beats alcohol, drugs, texting, skipping school, video games, sex, etc.? You think Jesus’ Gentile contemporaries didn’t know how to have fun in the Greek world? Yet, Jesus is in the temple studying. I wonder why? Could it be because his parents took him there in the first place? Could it be that they trained him that way? I can hear it now, Randy is just an old fuddy duddy. However, I’d much rather read about Jesus in the temple than about the twelve year-old on drugs, or the ones that killed themselves, or the one who killed an older adult to get a few dollars, or the one that is pregnant — I could go on and on. I may be a fuddy duddy but you can’t tell me there is not something wrong with our families and society.
I think it is time that we teach our children to be like Jesus and to take up their cross and follow Him. Parents, it starts with us teaching through our lives, at our homes, getting involved ourselves at church, and bringing them.
