A Day’s Journey 7/21/40

Scripture: Luke 2: 41-52.

Text: Luke 2: 44a; "But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey."

There are few things that can safely be taken for granted. Those who have learned, through long and rewarding years, the love of God, the presence of His Spirit and the grace of Jesus Christ know that these can be depended upon. But not even these rock-like realities may be taken for granted without a thought. The power from these great divine forces comes to us only as we keep ourselves receptive and seeking. It abides only as we use it in glad, consecrated living.

We have observed that we may not take world brotherhood for granted. Some years ago there were actually many of us who believed that a day had arrived when men were going to try to learn to deal fairly and justly with each other. War was about to be banished from the world. Now we see war abroad again, with new refinements and horrors which are a blasphemy on the name of the Creator. Conquest-bent, empire-mad selfishness dared to speak of Òholy warÓ and to put all out of the way who would say otherwise. Whole peoples are being violated, debauched, murdered on a tremendous scale in ruthless aggression sometimes hypocritically in the name of self defense. To any who had taken the growth of world brotherhood among all peoples for granted, all this must be a heavy disillusionment. It is certain that World brotherhood may not be taken for granted.

Many of us, after the fall of one crown after another following the first World War, had come to take for granted the rise and establishment of government of the people, by the people, for the people. We got so pleased with the prospect that we came near worshipping "almighty man" who could now control and direct his political, economic, and spiritual welfare, who was at last intelligent enough to direct his own destiny! Then new democracies began to totter and dictatorships arose; an economic collapse occurred which scared the world nearly out of the senses it did have. It appeared that man was not yet almighty. Evidently there were some things he had not yet learned, or at least he had miscalculated in some important instances. We began to realize, belatedly, that the atmosphere of democratic governmental and economic institutions in which our individual liberty had thrived will be kept clear only by our vigilant attention to it! We may not take our freedom for granted!

The family of Jesus once made the mistake of taking him for granted. In company with hundreds of other faithful Hebrews, they went to Jerusalem each year for the feast of the Passover. This feast they had observed faithfully from the time their ancestors had been delivered from slavery under the Egyptians. There must have been great crowds on every highway entering Jerusalem before the Passover, and leaving the city after it was over. Possibly the people of whole villages traveled together for company and for protection from danger. It is easy to understand, in a large group, that Joseph and Mary supposed Jesus was among the many children who trooped along together. He had come to the city in this fashion with them. He had been with them throughout the feast and doubtless knew that they would all be starting for home when it was over. So they really didn’t check up very carefully until their crowd camped after a day’s journey from the city. Then, after a careful search among their friends and relatives of the entire company, they discovered that the boy was not with them! So they had to retrace their steps, which they doubtless did in haste and in great distress.

It is a startling experience to realize that one has left a child behind. My 4-year-old brother was once inadvertently left watching the swimmers from the spectator’s gallery in a large municipal pool in a California town. When it was suddenly realized that he was with no one else in the family, there was sudden consternation and great anxiety. All this was heightened when he was not found where he had been left! As a matter of fact, the child, wandering out on the street, was picked up and taken home by policemen, arriving there before any of the rest of our family did. It was blessed relief from frantic anxiety to find him again. So I have great sympathy with the worried Joseph and Mary, who, having left Jesus behind in the capital city, hurried back and "sought him sorrowing." It took three days, says the record, before they found him, sitting in the temple, with learned men, asking and answering questions with deeply absorbed interest.

It is a weakness of human nature that we are tempted to blame some one else for our mistakes. There is a little of this in the mother’s question to the boy: "Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been worried, looking for you!" Of course, some of that feeling seems to be justified. It was time to go home. And the son seemed to them to have made no effort to join the returning crowd. He had become so absorbed in something else that his family and the journey seem to have been quite forgotten. But the fact remains that Joseph and Mary went a whole day’s journey without him! And their own carelessness had caused them a great deal of trouble. There is a parable in this story for us. If that could happen right within the Lords’ family circle, what about us? Jesus belonged in the life of Joseph and Mary. He belongs in your life and mine! It is our own fault if we find, at the end of a day’s journey, that he is not along! It is our business to make certain that he is along when we start. Simply to take Christ’s presence for granted leads to startling consequences, sometimes to real tragedy.

Dr. Horace H. Leavitt once observed a half-grown boy coming up with the press of people out of a crowded subway exit in New York City. Apparently his father was in the crowd and he swung along, his steps full of confidence, until he realized that he was not by his father’s side. Then he stopped, consternation written on his face, until his father appeared. Whereupon he sidled close to his father and resumed his walk, not with brazen over-confidence, but this time with the glad assurance that father was along, and that he was in his father’s company.

While I was a member of the Huron College Glee Club, we made a tour of towns in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Between concerts, one day, we took a trip through the great Wind Cave. It was winter time and no regular parties were being taken through. But one of our own members had served during the summer as a guide and so was permitted to take us in. Wind Cave is like a tremendous sponge, full of caverns, tunnels, unexplored openings. No one knows how big it was, for it had never been completely explored. There were two or three regular trails or routes through the cave over which interested tourists were led. A party chose whether it would take the half-hour route, the two hour trail, or whether they wished to spend as much as three of four hours in this deep underground maze. We chose a two-hour trip. After being equipped with a number of gasoline lanterns, we entered, following our acting guide, Don Glattly. Deep in the earth, a mile or two from the only known entrance to the cave, Don gathered together all the lanterns, turned them all out but one, and with that one disappeared over a ledge and into a tube, leaving us in the utter darkness of the blind and the absolute silence of the stone deaf. Presently we sang the college song just to break the stillness. When Don thought we had had enough, he reappeared with the lights. We were ready to retrace our steps toward the surface again. Two or three of our crowd were so sure they could find the way that a group of us broke into a dog-trot and went ahead of the guide. Through tunnels and over ledges we went, following the signs of foot wear on the rocks that marked the path. Into a large cavern we went, and started up a small flight of wooden steps. The steps were damp and suddenly one cracked under the weight of one of our party. We realized that it was an old trail, and the steps were now unused. We turned to find the way out and found there were several openings in the cavern. But they all looked unfamiliar! We could not even be sure, by now, through which one we had come. In confusion, all sense of direction lost, we stopped and waited, wondering if we were really on the right trail or were perhaps lost. Some of us wondered how long it might take a searching party to find us in that great maze of underground passageways. After a few minutes, that seemed an interminable length of time, the lights of the rest of the party, with Don in the lead, appeared down one of the corridors. We were mightily relieved, and quite content to let Don guide us the rest of the way out!

We poor people often go ahead, sure that we can find the way! We cry "righteous cause" and call on the Lord to be on our side when all mankind’s better experience shows that it would be better to find out just what is the Lord’s cause, and then align ourselves under his leadership. Or we lose our heads in a moment of panic and run, without considering whether Christ is along, or not.

A banker was caught badly in a time of financial depression. He though he saw ruin and disgrace before him. So he ran -- disappeared; -- not even his family knew where he was for days and weeks. At length, however, he returned, surrendered to officers, faced trial and was sentenced to a short prison term. The court found him guilty of a technical violation of the banking laws, though the judge made it clear that he considered the banker not so much a moral derelict as a victim of unusual circumstances. His most serious mistake was that he lost his head and ran "a day’s journey" -- a weeks’ journey -- without friends, family or God.

O how much better for our troubled little lives it would be to wait before going a day’s journey and to assure ourselves of His presence by saying, "Lord, what is thy will? What wilt thou have me to do? What is the right way to face this task or trial or threatened disgrace? What is the right way -- Thy way -- to face this task, this opportunity, this day’s work?"

There is just one further observation I want to make on the story of Jesus in the temple. Jesus, mere boy that he still was, made it clear that he was about his father’s business! In her anxiety and possible irritation, it must have taken his mother a long time to understand and appreciate this fact. It takes us too long! But if he is about our Father’s business, we ought to find out what that business is, and where we are needed in it, before going a day’s journey, or an hour’s journey, in any direction.

Amen.

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Dates and Places delivered:

Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, February 25, 1940 (AM).

Plymouth Church, Omaha, June 9, 1940 (candidate).

Merriam Congregational Church, Loda, IL, June 16, 1940.

First Presbyterian Church, Cedar Falls, IA, June 30, 1940

(Possible candidate).

Wisconsin Rapids, WI, July 21, 1940 (Candidate).

Irving Park Immanuel Church, Chicago, August 18, 1940.

WFHR, Wisconsin Rapids, November 8, 1940.

Hokuloa Church, Hawaii, November 2, 1969.

Waioli Hui’ia Church, February 18, 1973.