LOOKING FOR JESUS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

April 16, 2025

COFFEE WITH JESUS

LOOKING FOR JESUS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES.

Good Morning Lord, I love you. My first cup of coffee tastes even better when I sit drinking it  in your presence.

We were fortunate to be able to go to church this past Sunday, Passion Sunday or more commonly called Palm Sunday. It’s always a joyful service. We weren’t disappointed. The service did not have some of the pomp and pageantry that many Lutheran churches have in their Passion Sunday Worship Services, but the joy was there and the Spirit was truly present. There was the typical use of the palms to tickle and torment siblings,  a pair of brothers used them as swords in a duel of palm branches. Preschool girls danced uninhibitedly, joyfully waving the palms gracefully as they twirled and swirled to and fro at the front of the church. I fondly remembered my own daughter, the Pastor’s daughter, using her palm branch to tickle the shiny bald head of Bill Bridenstein 3 decades ago in a small church in northern Minnesota.

This past Sunday at church, our friend Cindy passed out the cutest tiny soft plastic figurines of Jesus, because “we all need a little Jesus”.Those of us who received them had to smile. I’m still smiling. I was looking for the figurine a couple of days ago, trying to remember where I’d put it after church. It was not in the pocket of the sweater I’d worn.I wanted to find it, not to use as an idol but as a visual prompt  to remind me that Jesus wants us to have the faith of a child, to rejoice in his presence, to smile and have great joy even in the midst of our mundane troubled  lives. I searched in my purse and all the other places I thought I might have put it. My husband asked me what I was looking for.

“I’m looking for Jesus.” It then became a silly game with various silly statements reminiscent of childhood games::

“I’m looking for Jesus in all the wrong places.”

“Jesus, come out come out wherever you are”

“Red Rover, RedRover, send Jesus right over”

“Jesus, why are you hiding from me?”

“Ally Ally Oxen Free”

“Jesus, where are you?” and finally: “I found Jesus” (at the bottom of my purse the third time I searched there, dumping the contents onto the table.)

Such a silly little game, yet it started the engines on a whole train of thought. 

Jesus is never lost. Luke 2:42-52). We may walk away from Him, lose sight of Him, and don’t speak to Him as often as we might. Like any relationship, conversation makes the relationship stronger, Jesus is always where He needs and wants to be. It is we who move away from Him.When we realize again that we our need to be near to Him again we may go looking for Him in all the wrong places, trying to fill that Jesus shaped hole in our hearts with other things that are ill fitting and an imperfect and only a hollow temporary satisfaction of our God shaped longing.

In Luke 2:40-52, Joseph and Mary searched for Jesus for 3 days before finding Him in the Temple in Jerusalem with the Rabais and others who gathered there listening to him.When Mary asked Him why He had  treated them, His parents this way. He asked them why they were searching for Him when He was where He needed to be. Indeed, Mary and Joseph were lost without Him!

We never find Jesus, but He may find us, chasing us down with His relentless, reckless, faithful and steadfast love. (Jeremiah 31:3, Isaiah 54:10. John 3:16) 

With all the joy and hope of Passion Sunday, all the palms and cloaks laid before Jesus in his triumphant entry to Jerusalem lie trampled, crushed and forgotten. The children’s dancing  ceases, and their shouts of “Hosanna! Hosanna Son of David!” fade to whispers.  The joy of Passion Sunday is overshadowed by the cross that waits at the end of the week.All hope seems lost as the soldiers take Jesus from the garden and He begins the grueling tortuous journey to Calvary. But we take heart, we do not grieve as the world grieves, we know that our hope and our joy is not dead! (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

Hosanna! Hosanna in the highest! 

Scripture:

Matthew 21:6-11

Luke:2: 40-52

Jeremiah 31:3

Isaiah 54:10

John 3:16

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18