The Early Childhood of Jesus

123:4.1This was, in­deed, an event­ful year in Je­sus’ life. Early in Jan­uary a great snow­storm oc­curred in Gal­i­lee. Snow fell two feet deep, the heav­i­est snow­fall Je­sus saw dur­ing his life­time and one of the deep­est at Naz­a­reth in a hun­dred years.

123:4.2The play life of Jew­ish chil­dren in the times of Je­sus was rather cir­cum­scribed; all too of­ten the chil­dren played at the more se­ri­ous things they ob­served their el­ders do­ing. They played much at wed­dings and fu­ner­als, cer­e­monies which they so fre­quently saw and which were so spec­tac­u­lar. They danced and sang but had few or­ga­nized games, such as chil­dren of later days so much en­joy.

123:4.3Je­sus, in com­pany with a neigh­bor boy and later his brother James, de­lighted to play in the far cor­ner of the fam­ily car­pen­ter shop, where they had great fun with the shav­ings and the blocks of wood. It was al­ways dif­fi­cult for Je­sus to com­pre­hend the harm of cer­tain sorts of play which were for­bid­den on the Sab­bath, but he never failed to con­form to his par­ents’ wishes. He had a ca­pac­ity for hu­mor and play which was af­forded lit­tle op­por­tu­nity for ex­pres­sion in the en­vi­ron­ment of his day and gen­er­a­tion, but up to the age of four­teen he was cheer­ful and light­hearted most of the time.

123:4.4Mary main­tained a dove­cote on top of the an­i­mal house ad­join­ing the home, and they used the prof­its from the sale of doves as a spe­cial char­ity fund, which Je­sus ad­min­is­tered af­ter he de­ducted the tithe and turned it over to the of­fi­cer of the syn­a­gogue.

123:4.5The only real ac­ci­dent Je­sus had up to this time was a fall down the back-yard stone stairs which led up to the can­vas-roofed bed­room. It hap­pened dur­ing an un­ex­pected July sand­storm from the east. The hot winds, car­ry­ing blasts of fine sand, usu­ally blew dur­ing the rainy sea­son, es­pe­cially in March and April. It was ex­traor­di­nary to have such a storm in July. When the storm came up, Je­sus was on the house­top play­ing, as was his habit, for dur­ing much of the dry sea­son this was his ac­cus­tomed play­room. He was blinded by the sand when de­scend­ing the stairs and fell. Af­ter this ac­ci­dent Joseph built a balustrade up both sides of the stair­way.

123:4.6There was no way in which this ac­ci­dent could have been pre­vented. It was not charge­able to ne­glect by the mid­way tem­po­ral guard­i­ans, one pri­mary and one sec­ondary mid­wayer hav­ing been as­signed to the watch­care of the lad; nei­ther was it charge­able to the guard­ian ser­a­phim. It sim­ply could not have been avoided. But this slight ac­ci­dent, oc­cur­ring while Joseph was ab­sent in En­dor, caused such great anx­i­ety to de­velop in Mary’s mind that she un­wisely tried to keep Je­sus very close to her side for some months.

123:4.7Ma­te­rial ac­ci­dents, com­mon­place oc­cur­rences of a phys­i­cal na­ture, are not ar­bi­trar­ily in­ter­fered with by ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties. Un­der or­di­nary cir­cum­stances only mid­way crea­tures can in­ter­vene in ma­te­rial con­di­tions to safe­guard the per­sons of men and women of des­tiny, and even in spe­cial sit­u­a­tions these be­ings can so act only in obe­di­ence to the spe­cific man­dates of their su­pe­ri­ors.

123:4.8And this was but one of a num­ber of such mi­nor ac­ci­dents which sub­se­quently be­fell this in­quis­i­tive and ad­ven­tur­ous youth. If you en­vis­age the av­er­age child­hood and youth of an ag­gres­sive boy, you will have a fairly good idea of the youth­ful ca­reer of Je­sus, and you will be able to imag­ine just about how much anx­i­ety he caused his par­ents, par­tic­u­larly his mother.

123:4.9The fourth mem­ber of the Naz­a­reth fam­ily, Joseph, was born Wednes­day morn­ing, March 16, A.D. 1.