The Adolescent Years

127:5.1Al­though Je­sus was poor, his so­cial stand­ing in Naz­a­reth was in no way im­paired. He was one of the fore­most young men of the city and very highly re­garded by most of the young women. Since Je­sus was such a splen­did spec­i­men of ro­bust and in­tel­lec­tual man­hood, and con­sid­er­ing his rep­u­ta­tion as a spir­i­tual leader, it was not strange that Re­becca, the el­dest daugh­ter of Ezra, a wealthy mer­chant and trader of Naz­a­reth, should dis­cover that she was slowly falling in love with this son of Joseph. She first con­fided her af­fec­tion to Miriam, Je­sus’ sis­ter, and Miriam in turn talked all this over with her mother. Mary was in­tensely aroused. Was she about to lose her son, now be­come the in­dis­pens­able head of the fam­ily? Would trou­bles never cease? What next could hap­pen? And then she paused to con­tem­plate what ef­fect mar­riage would have upon Je­sus’ fu­ture ca­reer; not of­ten, but at least some­times, did she re­call the fact that Je­sus was a “child of prom­ise.” Af­ter she and Miriam had talked this mat­ter over, they de­cided to make an ef­fort to stop it be­fore Je­sus learned about it, by go­ing di­rect to Re­becca, lay­ing the whole story be­fore her, and hon­estly telling her about their be­lief that Je­sus was a son of des­tiny; that he was to be­come a great re­li­gious leader, per­haps the Mes­siah.

127:5.2Re­becca lis­tened in­tently; she was thrilled with the recital and more than ever de­ter­mined to cast her lot with this man of her choice and to share his ca­reer of lead­er­ship. She ar­gued (to her­self) that such a man would all the more need a faith­ful and ef­fi­cient wife. She in­ter­preted Mary’s ef­forts to dis­suade her as a nat­u­ral re­ac­tion to the dread of los­ing the head and sole sup­port of her fam­ily; but know­ing that her fa­ther ap­proved of her at­trac­tion for the car­pen­ter’s son, she rightly reck­oned that he would gladly sup­ply the fam­ily with suf­fi­cient in­come fully to com­pen­sate for the loss of Je­sus’ earn­ings. When her fa­ther agreed to such a plan, Re­becca had fur­ther con­fer­ences with Mary and Miriam, and when she failed to win their sup­port, she made bold to go di­rectly to Je­sus. This she did with the co-op­er­a­tion of her fa­ther, who in­vited Je­sus to their home for the cel­e­bra­tion of Re­becca’s sev­en­teenth birth­day.

127:5.3Je­sus lis­tened at­ten­tively and sym­pa­thet­i­cally to the recital of these things, first by the fa­ther, then by Re­becca her­self. He made kindly re­ply to the ef­fect that no amount of money could take the place of his obli­ga­tion per­son­ally to rear his fa­ther’s fam­ily, to “ful­fill the most sa­cred of all hu­man trusts—loy­alty to one’s own flesh and blood.” Re­becca’s fa­ther was deeply touched by Je­sus’ words of fam­ily de­vo­tion and re­tired from the con­fer­ence. His only re­mark to Mary, his wife, was: “We can’t have him for a son; he is too no­ble for us.”

127:5.4Then be­gan that event­ful talk with Re­becca. Thus far in his life, Je­sus had made lit­tle dis­tinc­tion in his as­so­ci­a­tion with boys and girls, with young men and young women. His mind had been al­to­gether too much oc­cu­pied with the press­ing prob­lems of prac­ti­cal earthly af­fairs and the in­trigu­ing con­tem­pla­tion of his even­tual ca­reer “about his Fa­ther’s busi­ness” ever to have given se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion to the con­sum­ma­tion of per­sonal love in hu­man mar­riage. But now he was face to face with an­other of those prob­lems which ev­ery av­er­age hu­man be­ing must con­front and de­cide. In­deed was he “tested in all points like as you are.”

127:5.5Af­ter lis­ten­ing at­ten­tively, he sin­cerely thanked Re­becca for her ex­pressed ad­mi­ra­tion, adding, “it shall cheer and com­fort me all the days of my life.” He ex­plained that he was not free to en­ter into re­la­tions with any woman other than those of sim­ple broth­erly re­gard and pure friend­ship. He made it clear that his first and paramount duty was the rear­ing of his fa­ther’s fam­ily, that he could not con­sider mar­riage un­til that was ac­com­plished; and then he added: “If I am a son of des­tiny, I must not as­sume obli­ga­tions of life­long du­ra­tion un­til such a time as my des­tiny shall be made man­i­fest.”

127:5.6Re­becca was heart­bro­ken. She re­fused to be com­forted and im­por­tuned her fa­ther to leave Naz­a­reth un­til he fi­nally con­sented to move to Sep­pho­ris. In af­ter years, to the many men who sought her hand in mar­riage, Re­becca had but one an­swer. She lived for only one pur­pose—to await the hour when this, to her, the great­est man who ever lived would be­gin his ca­reer as a teacher of liv­ing truth. And she fol­lowed him de­vot­edly through his event­ful years of pub­lic la­bor, be­ing pres­ent (un­ob­served by Je­sus) that day when he rode tri­umphantly into Je­ru­sa­lem; and she stood “among the other women” by the side of Mary on that fate­ful and tragic af­ter­noon when the Son of Man hung upon the cross, to her, as well as to count­less worlds on high, “the one al­to­gether lovely and the great­est among ten thou­sand.”