The Two Crucial Years

126:1.1This is the cal­en­dar year of his four­teenth birth­day. He had be­come a good yoke maker and worked well with both can­vas and leather. He was also rapidly de­vel­op­ing into an ex­pert car­pen­ter and cab­i­net­maker. This sum­mer he made fre­quent trips to the top of the hill to the north­west of Naz­a­reth for prayer and med­i­ta­tion. He was grad­u­ally be­com­ing more self-con­scious of the na­ture of his be­stowal on earth.

126:1.2This hill, a lit­tle more than one hun­dred years pre­vi­ously, had been the “high place of Baal,” and now it was the site of the tomb of Sim­eon, a re­puted holy man of Is­rael. From the sum­mit of this hill of Sim­eon, Je­sus looked out over Naz­a­reth and the sur­round­ing coun­try. He would gaze upon Megiddo and re­call the story of the Egyp­tian army win­ning its first great vic­tory in Asia; and how, later on, an­other such army de­feated the Judean king Josiah. Not far away he could look upon Taanach, where Deb­o­rah and Barak de­feated Sis­era. In the dis­tance he could view the hills of Dothan, where he had been taught Joseph’s breth­ren sold him into Egyp­tian slav­ery. He then would shift his gaze over to Ebal and Ger­izim and re­count to him­self the tra­di­tions of Abra­ham, Ja­cob, and Abim­elech. And thus he re­called and turned over in his mind the his­toric and tra­di­tional events of his fa­ther Joseph’s peo­ple.

126:1.3He con­tin­ued to carry on his ad­vanced courses of read­ing un­der the syn­a­gogue teach­ers, and he also con­tin­ued with the home ed­u­ca­tion of his broth­ers and sis­ters as they grew up to suit­able ages.

126:1.4Early this year Joseph ar­ranged to set aside the in­come from his Naz­a­reth and Ca­per­naum prop­erty to pay for Je­sus’ long course of study at Je­ru­sa­lem, it hav­ing been planned that he should go to Je­ru­sa­lem in Au­gust of the fol­low­ing year when he would be fif­teen years of age.

126:1.5By the be­gin­ning of this year both Joseph and Mary en­ter­tained fre­quent doubts about the des­tiny of their first-born son. He was in­deed a bril­liant and lov­able child, but he was so dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand, so hard to fathom, and again, noth­ing ex­traor­di­nary or mirac­u­lous ever hap­pened. Scores of times had his proud mother stood in breath­less an­tic­i­pa­tion, ex­pect­ing to see her son en­gage in some super­hu­man or mirac­u­lous per­for­mance, but al­ways were her hopes dashed down in cruel dis­ap­point­ment. And all this was dis­cour­ag­ing, even dis­heart­en­ing. The de­vout peo­ple of those days truly be­lieved that proph­ets and men of prom­ise al­ways demon­strated their call­ing and es­tab­lished their di­vine au­thor­ity by per­form­ing mir­a­cles and work­ing won­ders. But Je­sus did none of these things; where­fore was the con­fu­sion of his par­ents steadily in­creased as they con­tem­plated his fu­ture.

126:1.6The im­proved eco­nomic con­di­tion of the Naz­a­reth fam­ily was re­flected in many ways about the home and es­pe­cially in the in­creased num­ber of smooth white boards which were used as writ­ing slates, the writ­ing be­ing done with char­coal. Je­sus was also per­mit­ted to re­sume his mu­sic lessons; he was very fond of play­ing the harp.

126:1.7Through­out this year it can truly be said that Je­sus “grew in fa­vor with man and with God.” The prospects of the fam­ily seemed good; the fu­ture was bright.