Have
you ever been confounded by some lack of a particular spiritual experience…felt
impoverished some way in your life with God?
No one is quite so dumbfounded
by “missing parts” as the believer hoping to move rapidly through the stages of
Christian faith. It feels unfair that
some have this great encounter with God and others that divine revelation that
super-charges them. We seem to be the
only ones stuck in the humdrum, jammed into a cubicle spiritually. Consider the elation Christ felt as a young
boy of twelve in His Father’s house. The
scriptures were there before Him, every letter of the Law available to His
twitchy finger tips. He was free to
probe the greatest of the rabbis and test their mettle with His questions. Day and night He was able to breathe in the
Father’s words without the commonplace distractions of mundane Nazareth; did
not have be interrupted by the roar of his brothers and sisters constant
badgering and harassment. No dishes to
wash, no cabinets to repair, no fussy parents to please. There in the Temple He was free to suck in
the full majesty of the Jewish religious experience…but if He had stayed there
even a moment past His mother’s press to return home, it all would have spilled
out upon the ground like a cracked nightmare.
Jesus went home and in the poverty of an academically barren village, He
lived the life given Him and He lived it well.
He gained what visions and ecstatic experiences could not provide Him; a
grown up view of Kingdom life. There is
no record of Jesus miracles during the next eighteen years of His life, no
burning bushes, no chariots of fire. It
was just weekly trips to the synagogue, daily having to trudge to the well to
get water jars filled, nightly sleeping on the same worn out blankets. Oh, he had the glow of the stars to brighten
His evenings and the stir of the crickets to awaken His slumber but everything
was always very much the same…the sunrise and the sunset, the musty
sun-scorched breeze that never really cooled.
Did Jesus speak in tongues then…did He get slain in the Spirit…did He “prophesy”? We have no record of any of that. We simply have Jesus learning obedience in
what He suffered so that when His time of glory came, He was ready to follow it
through to the end. Nothing will sanctify you any more than
simply doing what God gives you to do and being thankful for the extreme mercy
of the Father in showering your heart with the love of Christ.
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
men.
Luke 2:51-52 NIV 
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