"Why were you looking for me? Didn't you know that I had to be in my father's house?"
He was twelve. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus, as well as others who travelled with them, went to Jerusalem for an annual festival. When the festival ended, Joseph and Mary thought Jesus was with them.
They thought they knew where he was.
Hundreds of years before this, in Israel's history, two men were unaware of God's presence, or absence. Jacob declared his ignorance of the Lord's presence, after experiencing the "stair way to heaven." And Samson awoke as he had done before, expecting to easily defeat those who sought to take his strength. But he did not know that the Spirit of God had departed from him.
So it was with Mary and Joseph. Twelve years earlier, angels came to shepherds announcing the birth of God's son. Nine months before this, one angel told Mary of the birth of Immanuel, God with her and Israel. God was in Israel, the son of a Jewish girl.
He was also at a Jewish festival. But who truly knew who he was, or where he had to be?
