| Luke 2:49 – “I must be about the Father’s business” |
This is the season for Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Is it fiction based loosely on a person or a play to be performed in out of the way theaters for two weeks in December? Some say it created our practice of Christmas.
Before, it had few trappings of what we have now, but it was Dickens who introduced so many of the themes into the American Christmas concept.
It presents the portrait of a miserly man with a shriveled heart named Ebenezer Scrooge. He disdains people or poverty or the calendar. Every day is the same and the world is against him. So, he must fight for what he wants.
I’ve known some Scrooges in my life and perhaps you have as well.
So many things filter to life out of the crooked soul of Ebenezer Scrooge and his nocturnal encounter with his ghost. For Dickens, the story revolves around a central issue. Will Scrooge change?
Scrooge encounters his first ghost, the specter of the 7-year dead Jacob Marley, his former business partner. In the exchange, Scrooge is trying to pacify the ghost and rectify the vision at the same time. So, he says something that we all need to hear.
Scrooge says to Marley “But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”
It begs the question “what is your business in life?” And it’s not about the money but vital things that make a difference. It shines a light on a statement from Luke we quote but perhaps we don’t really understand.
In Luke 12, in that little vignette found nowhere else about the pre-adolescent Jesus.
Mary and Joseph have joined the caravan of pilgrims headed to Jerusalem to account themselves to the Roman Caesar.
It was on the trip home, when things went sideways. No one could find Jesus. Surely, we did not leave him.
Joseph and Mary make haste back to Jerusalem where he played “stump the Rabbis” and he was winning the game.
And with typical parental despair, they says, “Why have you treated us so? Don’t you know we have been worried sick about you?”
But then this 12-year-old gives a wiseman’s answer: “And He said to them, “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?”” (Luke 2:49)
My father’s business. Jesus was. Should we not be about the Father’s business?
Remember to ask of your life, “exactly what business should occupy my life?” In it you will find what your life is about.
–Robert G. Taylor
robertgtaylor.com
