Doing our Father’s work

As I looked at the story of the adolescent Jesus, his words to his parents struck me.

Didn’t you know that it was necessary for me to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49)

Jesus probably isn’t saying here, “I needed to be here in the temple to worship my Father.”

Actually, in the Greek, the word “house” is not even there. It literally says, “Didn’t you know it was necessary for me to be in the …. of my Father.”

Obviously, he was in the temple, so the word “house” gets put in there by translators. But in the KJV and the footnotes of most translations, it says, “it was necessary for me to be doing my Father’s business.”

And that was probably Jesus’s ultimate meaning: “I need to be involved with the things my Father is doing.”

As God’s children, so do we.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we need to be serving at the church every day. It does mean that wherever we are, we need to see what God is doing around us.

Whenever we touch people with his love, that’s doing ministry. That’s getting involved with our Father’s business.

How about you? Are you involved with your Father’s business?