The Two Crucial Years

126:5.1Grad­u­ally Je­sus and his fam­ily re­turned to the sim­ple life of their ear­lier years. Their clothes and even their food be­came sim­pler. They had plenty of milk, but­ter, and cheese. In sea­son they en­joyed the pro­duce of their gar­den, but each pass­ing month ne­ces­si­tated the prac­tice of greater fru­gal­ity. Their break­fasts were very plain; they saved their best food for the evening meal. How­ever, among these Jews lack of wealth did not im­ply so­cial in­fe­ri­or­ity.

126:5.2Al­ready had this youth well-nigh en­com­passed the com­pre­hen­sion of how men lived in his day. And how well he un­der­stood life in the home, field, and work­shop is shown by his sub­se­quent teach­ings, which so re­pletely re­veal his in­ti­mate con­tact with all phases of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence.

126:5.3The Naz­a­reth chazan con­tin­ued to cling to the be­lief that Je­sus was to be­come a great teacher, prob­a­bly the suc­ces­sor of the renowned Gamaliel at Je­ru­sa­lem.

126:5.4Ap­par­ently all Je­sus’ plans for a ca­reer were thwarted. The fu­ture did not look bright as mat­ters now de­vel­oped. But he did not fal­ter; he was not dis­cour­aged. He lived on, day by day, do­ing well the pres­ent duty and faith­fully dis­charg­ing the im­me­di­ate re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of his sta­tion in life. Je­sus’ life is the ev­er­last­ing com­fort of all dis­ap­pointed ide­al­ists.

126:5.5The pay of a com­mon day-la­bor­ing car­pen­ter was slowly di­min­ish­ing. By the end of this year Je­sus could earn, by work­ing early and late, only the equiv­a­lent of about twenty-five cents a day. By the next year they found it dif­fi­cult to pay the civil taxes, not to men­tion the syn­a­gogue as­sess­ments and the tem­ple tax of one-half shekel. Dur­ing this year the tax col­lec­tor tried to squeeze ex­tra rev­enue out of Je­sus, even threat­en­ing to take his harp.

126:5.6Fear­ing that the copy of the Greek scrip­tures might be dis­cov­ered and con­fis­cated by the tax col­lec­tors, Je­sus, on his fif­teenth birth­day, pre­sented it to the Naz­a­reth syn­a­gogue li­brary as his ma­tu­rity of­fer­ing to the Lord.

126:5.7The great shock of his fif­teenth year came when Je­sus went over to Sep­pho­ris to re­ceive the de­ci­sion of Herod re­gard­ing the ap­peal taken to him in the dis­pute about the amount of money due Joseph at the time of his ac­ci­den­tal death. Je­sus and Mary had hoped for the re­ceipt of a con­sid­er­able sum of money when the trea­surer at Sep­pho­ris had of­fered them a pal­try amount. Joseph’s broth­ers had taken an ap­peal to Herod him­self, and now Je­sus stood in the palace and heard Herod de­cree that his fa­ther had noth­ing due him at the time of his death. And for such an un­just de­ci­sion Je­sus never again trusted Herod An­tipas. It is not sur­pris­ing that he once al­luded to Herod as “that fox.”

126:5.8The close work at the car­pen­ter’s bench dur­ing this and sub­se­quent years de­prived Je­sus of the op­por­tu­nity of min­gling with the car­a­van pas­sen­gers. The fam­ily sup­ply shop had al­ready been taken over by his un­cle, and Je­sus worked al­to­gether in the home shop, where he was near to help Mary with the fam­ily. About this time he be­gan send­ing James up to the camel lot to gather in­for­ma­tion about world events, and thus he sought to keep in touch with the news of the day.

126:5.9As he grew up to man­hood, he passed through all those con­flicts and con­fu­sions which the av­er­age young per­sons of pre­vi­ous and sub­se­quent ages have un­der­gone. And the rig­or­ous ex­pe­ri­ence of sup­port­ing his fam­ily was a sure safe­guard against his hav­ing over­much time for idle med­i­ta­tion or the in­dul­gence of mys­tic ten­den­cies.

126:5.10This was the year that Je­sus rented a con­sid­er­able piece of land just to the north of their home, which was di­vided up as a fam­ily gar­den plot. Each of the older chil­dren had an in­di­vid­ual gar­den, and they en­tered into keen com­pe­ti­tion in their ag­ri­cul­tural ef­forts. Their el­dest brother spent some time with them in the gar­den each day dur­ing the sea­son of veg­etable cul­ti­va­tion. As Je­sus worked with his younger broth­ers and sis­ters in the gar­den, he many times en­ter­tained the wish that they were all lo­cated on a farm out in the coun­try where they could en­joy the lib­erty and free­dom of an un­ham­pered life. But they did not find them­selves grow­ing up in the coun­try; and Je­sus, be­ing a thor­oughly prac­ti­cal youth as well as an ide­al­ist, in­tel­li­gently and vig­or­ously at­tacked his prob­lem just as he found it, and did ev­ery­thing within his power to ad­just him­self and his fam­ily to the re­al­i­ties of their sit­u­a­tion and to adapt their con­di­tion to the high­est pos­si­ble sat­is­fac­tion of their in­di­vid­ual and col­lec­tive long­ings.

126:5.11At one time Je­sus faintly hoped that he might be able to gather up suf­fi­cient means, pro­vided they could col­lect the con­sid­er­able sum of money due his fa­ther for work on Herod’s palace, to war­rant un­der­tak­ing the pur­chase of a small farm. He had re­ally given se­ri­ous thought to this plan of mov­ing his fam­ily out into the coun­try. But when Herod re­fused to pay them any of the funds due Joseph, they gave up the am­bi­tion of own­ing a home in the coun­try. As it was, they con­trived to en­joy much of the ex­pe­ri­ence of farm life as they now had three cows, four sheep, a flock of chick­ens, a don­key, and a dog, in ad­di­tion to the doves. Even the lit­tle tots had their reg­u­lar du­ties to per­form in the well-reg­u­lated scheme of man­age­ment which char­ac­ter­ized the home life of this Naz­a­reth fam­ily.

126:5.12With the close of this fif­teenth year Je­sus com­pleted the traver­sal of that dan­ger­ous and dif­fi­cult pe­riod in hu­man ex­is­tence, that time of tran­si­tion be­tween the more com­pla­cent years of child­hood and the con­scious­ness of ap­proach­ing man­hood with its in­creased re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and op­por­tu­ni­ties for the ac­quire­ment of ad­vanced ex­pe­ri­ence in the de­vel­op­ment of a no­ble char­ac­ter. The growth pe­riod for mind and body had ended, and now be­gan the real ca­reer of this young man of Naz­a­reth.