The alarm rings, your head lifts from the pillow, the sun shines, your smile forms without any effort, the birds sing, and God’s presence seems palatable. But yet on other days, scattered between the good ones, thoughts are jumbled, doubts flood perilously, the smile is forced, and God seems so far away. Did Jesus feel this way too? Did he have difficult days?
I long to search God’s word to find a way to navigate these difficult days. We have so many larger-than-life characters from scripture that share with us their difficult struggles. And it does help reading their stories. But maybe if we searched a little closer at how Jesus lived as a human, we could find answers to some of our questions. We spend so much time on his deity that we forget about the clues he left us to make our struggles a little lighter. Our days a little less cloudy. Our yoke a little less heavy.
These devotional will chronicle the life of Jesus to search for answers. To look for clues and search his mind. To search his words and feel his presence. To chronicle, means to account for the historical events in the order of their occurrence. That will be my attempt. We will start with his birth and move from there. Can we find clues from the small town that Jesus was born, his friendships, his relationships, his prayers?
His prayers. Let’s start there. A lot of the material for this devotional will come from this one prayer that Jesus prayed the night he was arrested. Find it in your bibles in the book of John 17:1-26. It’s recorded that, Jesus looked up to heaven when he started his prayer. Let’s pause, open your hearts, look up to heaven. He then says, “Father”. God is our father, let’s address him properly. Jesus then said ” Father, the hour has come. ” Oh, this prayer is filled with so many revealing characteristics of Christ that we will study together. The hour has come for us to immerse ourselves into Jesus. Jesus the human. Let’s start here. Meditate on it. Open you hearts and minds. If you don’t know Jesus in a personal way, then begin your prayer the same way, look up to heaven, call out to your father, because he did create you, and invite him to get to know you personally. In this prayer, Jesus says that his father gives eternal life to each one of us , and knowing and recognizing Christ is the way to eternal life, to know him, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, the one he sent to earth. That’s it. Recognize this and move forward. Let’s immerse ourselves in the humanity of Jesus.
