On the Way to Rome

130:5.1The trav­el­ers had but one pur­pose in go­ing to Crete, and that was to play, to walk about over the is­land, and to climb the moun­tains. The Cre­tans of that time did not en­joy an en­vi­able rep­u­ta­tion among the sur­round­ing peo­ples. Nev­er­the­less, Je­sus and Ga­nid won many souls to higher lev­els of think­ing and liv­ing and thus laid the foun­da­tion for the quick re­cep­tion of the later gospel teach­ings when the first preach­ers from Je­ru­sa­lem ar­rived. Je­sus loved these Cre­tans, not­with­stand­ing the harsh words which Paul later spoke con­cern­ing them when he sub­se­quently sent Ti­tus to the is­land to re­or­ga­nize their churches.

130:5.2On the moun­tain­side in Crete Je­sus had his first long talk with Gonod re­gard­ing re­li­gion. And the fa­ther was much im­pressed, say­ing: “No won­der the boy be­lieves ev­ery­thing you tell him, but I never knew they had such a re­li­gion even in Je­ru­sa­lem, much less in Da­mas­cus.” It was dur­ing the is­land so­journ that Gonod first pro­posed to Je­sus that he go back to In­dia with them, and Ga­nid was de­lighted with the thought that Je­sus might con­sent to such an ar­range­ment.

130:5.3One day when Ga­nid asked Je­sus why he had not de­voted him­self to the work of a pub­lic teacher, he said: “My son, ev­ery­thing must await the com­ing of its time. You are born into the world, but no amount of anx­i­ety and no man­i­fes­ta­tion of im­pa­tience will help you to grow up. You must, in all such mat­ters, wait upon time. Time alone will ripen the green fruit upon the tree. Sea­son fol­lows sea­son and sun­down fol­lows sun­rise only with the pass­ing of time. I am now on the way to Rome with you and your fa­ther, and that is suf­fi­cient for to­day. My to­mor­row is wholly in the hands of my Fa­ther in heaven.” And then he told Ga­nid the story of Moses and the forty years of watch­ful wait­ing and con­tin­ued prepa­ra­tion.

130:5.4One thing hap­pened on a visit to Fair Havens which Ga­nid never for­got; the mem­ory of this episode al­ways caused him to wish he might do some­thing to change the caste sys­tem of his na­tive In­dia. A drunken de­gen­er­ate was at­tack­ing a slave girl on the pub­lic high­way. When Je­sus saw the plight of the girl, he rushed for­ward and drew the maiden away from the as­sault of the mad­man. While the fright­ened child clung to him, he held the in­fu­ri­ated man at a safe dis­tance by his pow­er­ful ex­tended right arm un­til the poor fel­low had ex­hausted him­self beat­ing the air with his an­gry blows. Ga­nid felt a strong im­pulse to help Je­sus han­dle the af­fair, but his fa­ther for­bade him. Though they could not speak the girl’s lan­guage, she could un­der­stand their act of mercy and gave to­ken of her heart­felt ap­pre­ci­a­tion as they all three es­corted her home. This was prob­a­bly as near a per­sonal en­counter with his fel­lows as Je­sus ever had through­out his en­tire life in the flesh. But he had a dif­fi­cult task that evening try­ing to ex­plain to Ga­nid why he did not smite the drunken man. Ga­nid thought this man should have been struck at least as many times as he had struck the girl.