Daily Devotionals

Truths to Live By - One Day at a Time

Devotional: September 12th

“But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey.”

When Jesus was twelve, His parents and He went from Nazareth to Jerusalem to keep the Feast of the Passover. Doubtless they traveled with a large crowd of other pilgrims. It was inevitable that boys of the same age would pal together during the festivities. Therefore, on the return trip to Nazareth, Joseph and Mary assumed that Jesus was with the other young people somewhere in the caravan. But He wasn’t. He had stayed behind in Jerusalem. They traveled for a full day before they missed Him. Then they had to backtrack to Jerusalem where they found Him after three days.

There is a lesson in this for us all. It is possible for us to suppose Jesus is in our company when He is not. We may think that we are walking in fellowship with Him when actually sin has come between our souls and the Savior. Spiritual decline is subtle. We are not conscious of our coldness. We think that we are the same as ever.

But other people can tell. They can tell by our talk that we have drifted away from our first love and that worldly interests have taken precedence over the spiritual. They can detect that we have been feeding on the leeks, the onions and the garlic of Egypt. They notice that we have become critical whereas once we were loving and kind. They notice that we use a lot of street talk instead of the language of Zion. Whether they notice it or not, we have lost our song. We are unhappy and miserable ourselves and tend to make other people miserable too. Nothing seems to go right. Money leaks out of our pockets. If we try to witness for the Savior, we have little impact on others. They don’t see that much difference between themselves and us.

Usually it takes a crisis of some kind to reveal to us that Jesus is not in our company. It may be that we hear God’s voice speaking to us through some anointed preaching. Or a friend might put an arm around us and confront us with our low spiritual condition. Or it may be a sickness, the death of a loved one, or some tragedy that brings us to our senses.

When that happens, we have to do what Joseph and Mary did—go back to the place where we last saw Him. We have to go back to the place where some sin broke our fellowship with Him. By confessing and forsaking our sin, we find forgiveness, and begin traveling with Jesus in our company once more.