“They kept looking for Jesus….” John 11:56

I celebrated Easter Sunday with my family this year and had the joy of remembering and sharing the new life of the resurrection, which is central to the Gospel message. It was great to be together with most of my family, children and grandchildren. One of the things we traditionally do with the grandchildren is to hide multi-colored eggs, often filled with candy or small stickers and let them hunt for them. The thought of the possibility of scoring additional candy is always high motivation, coming as a close rival to the large amounts of candy available at Halloween. In this yearly tradition, with the eggs hidden, there is always the chance that some eggs will not be seen or noticed because of the various forms of camouflage and obscure placement used to conceal them. Since I usually know, or at least can see where most the eggs are hidden it is my job to keep the grandchildren looking in the expected and unexpected places. The eggs most difficult to find are the ones discovered in the unexpected and possibly more obscure places. The encouragement the adults will offer is to “Keep looking”.

This encouragement to keep looking faces us every day of our lives when it comes to seeking the resurrected Christ. We are easily discouraged when He is not easily experienced or recognized in our journey. In John 11:54-57 the Jews who came to the Passover festival hoping to catch a glimpse of the one who had raised Lazarus from the dead were no different. They didn’t see Jesus in Jerusalem when they came for their ceremonial cleansing. He was not there. The Pharisees had marked Jesus as a threat and intended to arrest Him. Jesus, rather than coming to Jerusalem, had moved with His disciples out to a small town bordering on the wilderness. There He waited for the appropriate time to enter Jerusalem. The frustration experienced by the crowds in Jerusalem was that, though they were seeking Jesus, He was not there. Jesus was not where they expected to find Him. But there was a group who knew exactly where Jesus was. His disciples had gone with Him, followed Him into the wilderness and experienced Him there.

Too often, in my life, I am like the Jewish crowds looking for Jesus in the expected place, the religious place, the normal and familiar place. Yet Jesus, surprisingly, is in an out of the way, wilderness place. Those who find Him there are those who seek Him and follow Him there, into that obscure and out of the way place. It is often because I’ve failed to seek out Jesus in the unexpected places that I miss the experience of His presence I so long for. Like my grandchildren, when I have exhausted all the expected places, I must keep looking and allow the Lord to meet me in unexpected places and in unexpected ways. In doing so my faith continues to be enlarged along with my capacity to experience the Lord’s grace and love in the variety of circumstances the journey involves.

As you journey into the next days, weeks and months I want to encourage you to keep looking for Jesus. There are many things that can frustrate that search, one being that Jesus at times seems to elude us in the normal expected places of our lives and then we stop looking for Him. We allow the distractions of this world to draw us away from the giver of life, because they seem more convenient and available. But Jesus may choose a new place of encounter, a new way of experiencing His presence to further deepen our roots of faith in Him and further enlighten the eyes of our heart. He wants us to see and experience more of Him as we come to know Him. He will not settle for just leaving us in the familiar, comfortable and manageable places of our lives. He wants us to stretch and grow more into His image and likeness. To accomplish this kind of growth we must continue to look for Him beyond the expected places of life and into the unexpected realms of life so He can meet us there. May the eyes of faith to see the unexpected, and unfamiliar place of His presence characterize this new season of Easter. Our call is to keep looking for Jesus, wherever He might be, that we might follow Him closely and experience the abundance of His life everlasting. Here is a song to further encourage you on the journey.