After the celebration was over, they started home to Nazareth, but Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t miss him at first. —Luke 2:43

On one occasion when Jesus was twelve years old, He went missing. Mary and Joseph lost sight of Him, and it took three days of searching to find Him again. They had been in Jerusalem for the Passover, and as they were returning home, He was nowhere to be found. But here is the interesting thing: they traveled an entire day before they missed Him. It isn’t that they lost their love for Him or their faith. They just lost Him.

Can this happen to us?

The answer is yes. It is possible to go through an hour, a day, or even a week without a passing thought of Jesus. (That is, until a crisis hits.) This is the easiest thing to do at Christmas. We are so busy celebrating the birth of Christ that we can forget about Christ. This is the time of year when we have all kinds of responsibilities. And God’s only begotten Son can become God’s only forgotten Son.

One way we lose Jesus is when nonessentials displace essentials. When we are busy, often our spiritual lives are the first things to go. We don’t have time to read God’s Word. We don’t have time to pray, even for a moment. We can’t afford to give anything to God because we have so many things to buy. We allow nonessentials to take the place of essentials.

Whenever I lose something, I retrace my steps. Where did I have it last? I go back to that place, and often I will find it there.

If you’ve found that you’ve lost Jesus in the busyness of life, then you need to go back to where you were before. And the good news is that even if we lose sight of Jesus, He never loses sight of us.