The Two Crucial Years

126:2.1All did go well un­til that fate­ful day of Tues­day, Septem­ber 25, when a run­ner from Sep­pho­ris brought to this Naz­a­reth home the tragic news that Joseph had been severely in­jured by the falling of a der­rick while at work on the gov­er­nor’s res­i­dence. The mes­sen­ger from Sep­pho­ris had stopped at the shop on the way to Joseph’s home, in­form­ing Je­sus of his fa­ther’s ac­ci­dent, and they went to­gether to the house to break the sad news to Mary. Je­sus de­sired to go im­me­di­ately to his fa­ther, but Mary would hear to noth­ing but that she must has­ten to her hus­band’s side. She di­rected that James, then ten years of age, should ac­com­pany her to Sep­pho­ris while Je­sus re­mained home with the younger chil­dren un­til she should re­turn, as she did not know how se­ri­ously Joseph had been in­jured. But Joseph died of his in­juries be­fore Mary ar­rived. They brought him to Naz­a­reth, and on the fol­low­ing day he was laid to rest with his fa­thers.

126:2.2Just at the time when prospects were good and the fu­ture looked bright, an ap­par­ently cruel hand struck down the head of this Naz­a­reth house­hold, the af­fairs of this home were dis­rupted, and ev­ery plan for Je­sus and his fu­ture ed­u­ca­tion was de­mol­ished. This car­pen­ter lad, now just past four­teen years of age, awak­ened to the re­al­iza­tion that he had not only to ful­fill the com­mis­sion of his heav­enly Fa­ther to re­veal the di­vine na­ture on earth and in the flesh, but that his young hu­man na­ture must also shoul­der the re­spon­si­bil­ity of car­ing for his wid­owed mother and seven broth­ers and sis­ters—and an­other yet to be born. This lad of Naz­a­reth now be­came the sole sup­port and com­fort of this so sud­denly be­reaved fam­ily. Thus were per­mit­ted those oc­cur­rences of the nat­u­ral or­der of events on Uran­tia which would force this young man of des­tiny so early to as­sume these heavy but highly ed­u­ca­tional and dis­ci­plinary re­spon­si­bil­i­ties at­ten­dant upon be­com­ing the head of a hu­man fam­ily, of be­com­ing fa­ther to his own broth­ers and sis­ters, of sup­port­ing and pro­tect­ing his mother, of func­tion­ing as guard­ian of his fa­ther’s home, the only home he was to know while on this world.

126:2.3Je­sus cheer­fully ac­cepted the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties so sud­denly thrust upon him, and he car­ried them faith­fully to the end. At least one great prob­lem and an­tic­i­pated dif­fi­culty in his life had been trag­i­cally solved—he would not now be ex­pected to go to Je­ru­sa­lem to study un­der the rab­bis. It re­mained al­ways true that Je­sus “sat at no man’s feet.” He was ever will­ing to learn from even the hum­blest of lit­tle chil­dren, but he never de­rived au­thor­ity to teach truth from hu­man sources.

126:2.4Still he knew noth­ing of the Ga­briel visit to his mother be­fore his birth; he only learned of this from John on the day of his bap­tism, at the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry.

126:2.5As the years passed, this young car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth in­creas­ingly mea­sured ev­ery in­sti­tu­tion of so­ci­ety and ev­ery us­age of re­li­gion by the un­vary­ing test: What does it do for the hu­man soul? does it bring God to man? does it bring man to God? While this youth did not wholly ne­glect the recre­ational and so­cial as­pects of life, more and more he de­voted his time and en­er­gies to just two pur­poses: the care of his fam­ily and the prepa­ra­tion to do his Fa­ther’s heav­enly will on earth.

126:2.6This year it be­came the cus­tom for the neigh­bors to drop in dur­ing the win­ter evenings to hear Je­sus play upon the harp, to lis­ten to his sto­ries (for the lad was a mas­ter sto­ry­teller), and to hear him read from the Greek scrip­tures.

126:2.7The eco­nomic af­fairs of the fam­ily con­tin­ued to run fairly smoothly as there was quite a sum of money on hand at the time of Joseph’s death. Je­sus early demon­strated the pos­ses­sion of keen busi­ness judg­ment and fi­nan­cial sagac­ity. He was lib­eral but fru­gal; he was sav­ing but gen­er­ous. He proved to be a wise and ef­fi­cient ad­min­is­tra­tor of his fa­ther’s es­tate.

126:2.8But in spite of all that Je­sus and the Naz­a­reth neigh­bors could do to bring cheer into the home, Mary, and even the chil­dren, were over­cast with sad­ness. Joseph was gone. Joseph was an un­usual hus­band and fa­ther, and they all missed him. And it seemed all the more tragic to think that he died ere they could speak to him or hear his farewell bless­ing.