WEBVTT

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The text is our Gospel reading from Luke 2.

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It's not hard to put yourself in the sandals of Mary and Joseph is it?

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You can easily imagine the agonizing apprehension, the fear and

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foreboding and the heavy guilt that must have fueled their frantic

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search.

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It was probably an honest mistake, but the fact remained they had lost

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their son. Worse

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they had misplaced the Messiah.

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As they hurried back to Jerusalem

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they must have been wired with a sort of half-crazed, worry and

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energy, that would not relent.

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And so, when they finally do find Jesus, you can imagine the flood of

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emotions that swept over them relief, happiness, and gratitude, and

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then stunned bewilderment.

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That only seemed to grow as they took in the scene.

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There was Jesus in the temple courts

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calm,

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cool collected, deep into heavy conversation with the nation's top

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theologians.

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He was not cowering in some forgotten alley.

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He was not wandering, forlornly with puffy, red pathetic eyes.

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He was not in distress or danger or discomfort at all.

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He was just sitting there chatting it up with a bunch of Sem profs.

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Mary and Joseph were shocked.

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Luke uses a rather potent verb here.

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It's more than amazed more than astounded.

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It's more like flabbergasted.

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That's not right either.

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It sounds nowadays

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more silly than shocked.

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Actually, the Brits have a word that gets it right here.

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Gobsmacked.

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Mary and Joseph were gobsmacked by Jesus.

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When she finally found her voice Mary's perplexity and indignation

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were both clear.

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Child

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what are you doing?

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We've been looking everywhere for you.

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But as usual, Jesus flips the conversation.

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He can't figure out why Joseph and Mary are so surprised that he

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stayed in Jerusalem to do some God talk with God's people. For Jesus at

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it was already also obvious.

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He had work to do.

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And that work was all about doing his father's business.

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His father's God's stuff.

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Jesus responds to Mary contains

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its own not-so-veiled correction.

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While you and Joseph were busy looking for me.

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I was busy here

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doing my Father's work.

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And so, it is that this memory of Mary's is loaded with deep

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Christology.

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Jesus knew at age 12, he knew that he was the only begotten Son of

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God.

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Jesus knew that his business in this world was to do God's business.

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God's work of rescuing redeeming and restoring this rebellious lost

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creation.

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Mary and Joseph were working to find their lost son

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while their son was working to save the lost world.

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As it's so, invariably happens, Joseph and Mary found what they were

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looking for, right

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where they had left it.

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Jesus was where he was when they had left him still right

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smack

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in the middle of doing God's work.

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Accomplishing God's will for the sake of the world.

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Here in the temple

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Jesus has made it clear that he knows all of this.

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He knows who he is, and he makes sure that his parents now know that

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he knows as well.

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At the age of bar mitzvah

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Jesus has declared his full divine identity.

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Think about how this moment of Revelation might have played out.

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This, could have been the watershed event when everything changed.

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Jesus could have begun now his Messianic work in earnest. The like

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little Samuel so long ago before he could have stayed on there in

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God's house studying and teaching and then leading the leaders into

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the fullness of God's truth.

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Perhaps he could have even stayed there and established his kingdom

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right there in Jerusalem, where David and we're once eight year old

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Josiah had ruled.

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It could have been epic.

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But none of that happens.

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And what does happen may

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well be the most remarkable part of this story of all. After Jesus

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reveals his full identity and his purpose to Mary and Joseph.

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What's next?

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Three walk back to Nazareth where Jesus continues to be submissively

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obedient to his Earthly parents for another 18 years or so.

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It's kind of crazy.

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Jesus, who is the Messiah.

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Who is the savior of the world.

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Whose father is God, who is God himself lives

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a humble ordinary inconsequential life, like any other boy growing

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into a man following in his father's footsteps.

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And that's the point.

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And that you see is precisely

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the work Jesus had been given to do by following his Earthly foster

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father

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Joseph.

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Jesus is following in the footsteps of his heavenly father, who gives

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everything for the sake of his creation. Being an obedient human son

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was the way that the Divine son was going about his father's business.

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Jesus, the obedient son obeyed, Joseph

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and Mary because that's what the father sent him to do.

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Who could imagine that God would save the world by being a simple

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carpenter's apprentice in a dusty forgotten corner of an insignificant

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backwater of the world?

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Gobsmacked again.

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That's the way it is with us

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and God.

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He routinely does things that do not make sense to us, that we can't

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seem to figure out that are not routine.

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God does things that don't add up, they don't fit into our ideas about

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how things are supposed to work.

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What we considered to be significant, God considers to be trivial.

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What we think is frivolous and unimportant God chooses to honor and

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use for His highest purposes. Like Jesus

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being an obedient son and so being the true Glory of God that God had

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always intended for his creation.

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Jesus showed God's glory by being the faithful son.

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In Bethlehem at his birth, in Egypt as a toddler and a refugee, in

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Jerusalem talking theology with Israel's teachers and then back in

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Nazareth

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again, learning how to build stuff and how to be a human son.

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Jesus was being the faithful son.

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And then back in Jerusalem, one more time.

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But this time standing silent before Israel's greatest, teachers and

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leaders and talking theology, only with a pagan Roman and letting

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himself be mocked, and stripped, and tortured, and whipped, and nailed

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to a cross and killed.

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Now God's chosen son does not do what we expect God to do the cross

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leaves us all utterly undone.

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God death for the sake of his creation.

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Gobsmacked again.

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But we are perhaps so familiar with the story.

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So familiar with the humble obedient.

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So familiar with the cross that we lose sight of how incredible and

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bizarre, God's ways can be.

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So just to make sure that this truth of God's inexplicable ways of

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working actually sinks in a little bit, consider for a moment, another

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bold declaration from the Bible, a bold declaration made by St.

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Paul in the reading from Epohesians

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this past Sunday. Before the world was made Paul writes,

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God had already chosen us to be his in Christ, so that we would be

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holy and without fault before him. Because of his love

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God had already decided that through Jesus

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he would bring us to himself as his sons.

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Think about that even before he created the world, God chose you.

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Predestined.

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You better believe it.

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What did you have to do with that?

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Nothing, you did not choose him.

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He chose you.

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He did it

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all. Free

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will.

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Are you kidding?

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The only free will at work

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here is God's Eternal will to choose you.

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Eternal election.

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Makes no sense to us.

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It offends us.

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It seems to violate our human dignity.

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It ignores our need to cultivate an illusion of individual autonomy

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and personal choice.

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But God does what he does.

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And works as he works.

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He is in control, choosing you before he spoke light into existence or

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created the first star.

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He's in control and a 12 year old boy from Nazareth being obedient to

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his parents.

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He's in control doing what he does to save his creation to save you.

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Gobsmacked again.

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Well, actually God smacked.

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He does that doesn't he? A God, who elects unilaterally. A God who

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creates at a whim. A God who lives

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humbly. A  God, who dies horribly. A God, who rises and lives

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Eternally.

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This is how God works for you.

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You are God 

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smacked.

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So when you've been God smacked and utterly confounded by God, what do

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you do?

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Well, you do what Mary

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did. You let God be God and all the wonderful things that God does that

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you do

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not understand, you simply treasure in your heart.

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Mary came to realize, I'm sure that there was nothing accidental about

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Jesus, staying behind in Jerusalem that Passover.

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She learned that it was all part of the plan.

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She did not understand the plan, but she believed.

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And she treasured what God was doing.

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It's no different for you.

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You don't need to understand what God does and says and allows to

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happen.

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You only need to receive it and believe it and cherish it.

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Don't worry that it doesn't make sense or that it violates all the

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rules of nature or that it dishonors

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human reason.

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I mean, what else do you expect from God?

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Simply Delight in what God does.

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He's already elected

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you and baptized you and directed you this far.

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Be sure of it.

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He's also going to see you through and preserve you and raise you and

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glorify you. You his own adopted child.

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That's right.

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You God smacked yet again.

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Amen.

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We stand for the Benedictus.