The Earthly and the Heavenly Parentage
Luke 2:49
And he said to them, How is it that you sought me? knew you not that I must be about my Father's business?


It was a hard, stern lesson for the heart of the mother; she lives only in Him, but He has now another life and another being. Such is her first lessons in the mystery of the two lives, the twofold relationship. For a considerable portion of the life of all men, the two relationships are at one. The parent represents God to the child, and the child sees God through the parent. It is a sweet and lovely time for the mother, which nature perhaps would bid her protract. She feels that only good can come of it, so pure and so heavenward are her own aspirations for her child. Cannot the son continue to seek heaven only through her? is there any moral blank, is there any spiritual necessity to forbid her saying as a thing for all time and for all life, "So be it, it is good for us to be thus"? Yes, she must learn the great lesson, "All souls are Mine; as the soul of the parent, so also the soul of the son is Mine"; and God is the speaker. She must bend her neck to this discipline, or it will be the worse for her and for her child. The child has a Father in heaven, and at the first dawn of reason he must be about his Father's business. There are parents who have sought to perpetuate the spiritual infancy, to stand between God and the boy, to be still the conscience keeper and the mediator even when the open consciousness of the relationships direct and immediate should have warned them off as from holy ground. They have done so, and the Nemesis has been sharp and swift, the devotion diverted from God has found its object in Belial or Mammon. The mother may divert, but she cannot retain it.

(Dean Vaughan.)



Parallel Verses
KJV: And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?

WEB: He said to them, "Why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?"




The Dawn of Sacred Duty: a Sermon to the Young
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