THE YOUNG CARPENTER.
There are many years of the life of Jesus of which the Gospel story
tells us nothing. He lived with Mary and Joseph in Nazareth, and was
preparing for the great work for which He came. He learned easily all
that other boys were taught in the synagogue school, and no doubt
caused His teacher to wonder at such wisdom coming from a boy. He was
so humble and teachable that no one could accuse Him of setting Himself
above His companions, and so winning and unselfish that He was loved by
all. The school days ended, perhaps, when He was fourteen, and He was
asked, as every Jewish boy was asked, to choose what trade He would
learn, for every boy had to learn a trade. He chose to learn the trade
of His father, and began to work with him making the many things that
were then used by the people. Few houses, if any, were made of wood,
for the white limestone was then, as now, used in making the houses of
Nazareth, but they were finished with wood, and wood was used not only
for boats, tables, benches, yokes and carts, but also for plows,
saddles, and many things we now make of other material. Can you make a
picture in your mind of this tall, beautiful youth standing near His
father ready to serve in any humble way in the work they were doing?
There was no service so small that He did not willingly do it, and no
labor so rough and common that He did not make it noble and beautiful
by the doing. But He was always thinking--thinking. The world around
Him was full of pictures and stories through which heavenly truths
shone, and they formed themselves in His mind, and when He began to
teach He used them to help others with. We call them parables.
Wherever He saw the flowers, the grape vines, the olive and the fig
trees, the wheat fields, the shepherds and their flocks, the fishermen
and their nets, He read high and holy lessons that were much more
simple, and true, and beautiful than those taught by the Rabbis.
The more He thought about the teaching of the Rabbis, the more He saw
how false and hard it was. The Law given by Moses was full of the good
thoughts of God, but the Jewish teachers had only taught the outward
form, and had not given the people the inward spirit. It was like
bringing to the hungry a beautiful dish with no food in it, or to the
thirsty a costly cup with no water in it.
As He grew older He would sit sometimes long into the night on some
hillside watching the stars, and with his great heart going out beyond
the hills to the people of the world in longing love and in desire for
their salvation. He wanted to show them how God loved the world. He
wanted to take the empty forms of the Law and fill them full of the
Spirit--the real thought and love of God. He wanted to take away the
burdens on the minds of the people, which were heavier than those that
Pharoah laid upon their bodies long before, and give them the rest and
peace of God. He wanted to take away their endless rules and give them
one rule--to do by others as they would have others do to them. And He
wanted to add a new Commandment to the Law--that they love one another.
In this way, by living with His mind in heaven and His body on earth He
came to know that He was the Christ of God, and that He must go out
from Nazareth to be a Teacher of Truth, and begin to build The Kingdom
of Heaven among men. But His friends thought that He was fitted to be
a Rabbi and teach in the Temple with the Doctors of the Law. He waited
many years, caring for His mother and His younger brothers and sisters
after the death of Joseph, and then He left Nazareth.