Let Me Know You in the Now

And behold, a voice out of the heavens, saying, “This is My Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.” (Matthew 3:17 NASB)

This affirming word to Jesus comes from His Father before He actually does much in terms of all the amazing things that lie ahead with His earthly ministry. At the outset the Father is already pleased with Him.

Why so? What was He doing up till this time that was so wonderful, so pleasing?

Eating, drinking, working, bustling around in the carpenter shop, being a son and an older brother to Mary’s other children, chatting with friends, reading, learning, praying, laughing at jokes, making jokes, weeping when He suffered heartaches like when Joseph died, sleeping, bathing, going to synagogue (church), going to the bathroom. Emmanuel. God residing in man’s fragile frame. In short, being alive. Mundane, normal, unknown.

Everyman.

Jesus spent 90 percent of His earthly life learning how to live in circumstances that were just as humbling, boring, joyous, tragic, and altogether human as ours. He learned to live a wholly sanctified existence, to live for the pleasure of the Father whether He was chewing at a hangnail or contemplating the eternal Word.

It was all the same to Him, and it was established before He set even one calloused foot into the muddy Jordan to be baptized by John the Baptist and “fulfill all righteousness.”

It’s not flashy spiritual stuff that makes a godly man. It’s not miracles and prophecies and teaching. It’s not a martyr’s death.

It’s learning to live. It’s being alive to God in what Jean-Pierre de Caussade called “the Sacrament of the Present Moment,” and what Michael Card mused as a prayer, “Let me know You in the Now.”

Father help me, Your little tottering child, to walk as You do.