Miriam (sister of Jesus)

190:2.6And David did not long wait, for the fourth ap­pear­ance of Je­sus to mor­tal rec­og­ni­tion oc­curred shortly be­fore two o’clock in this very home of Martha and Mary, when he ap­peared vis­i­bly be­fore his earthly fam­ily and their friends, twenty in all. The Mas­ter ap­peared in the open back door, say­ing: “Peace be upon you. Greet­ings to those once near me in the flesh and fel­low­ship for my broth­ers and sis­ters in the king­dom of heaven. How could you doubt? Why have you lin­gered so long be­fore choos­ing to fol­low the light of truth with a whole heart? Come, there­fore, all of you into the fel­low­ship of the Spirit of Truth in the Fa­ther’s king­dom.” As they be­gan to re­cover from the first shock of their amaze­ment and to move to­ward him as if to em­brace him, he van­ished from their sight.

123:2.3Je­sus was five years old in Au­gust of this year, and we will, there­fore, re­fer to this as his fifth (cal­en­dar) year of life. In this year, 2 B.C., a lit­tle more than one month be­fore his fifth birth­day an­niver­sary, Je­sus was made very happy by the com­ing of his sis­ter Miriam, who was born on the night of July 11. Dur­ing the evening of the fol­low­ing day Je­sus had a long talk with his fa­ther con­cern­ing the man­ner in which var­i­ous groups of liv­ing things are born into the world as sep­a­rate in­di­vid­u­als. The most valu­able part of Je­sus’ early ed­u­ca­tion was se­cured from his par­ents in an­swer to his thought­ful and search­ing in­quiries. Joseph never failed to do his full duty in tak­ing pains and spend­ing time an­swer­ing the boy’s nu­mer­ous ques­tions. From the time Je­sus was five years old un­til he was ten, he was one con­tin­u­ous ques­tion mark. While Joseph and Mary could not al­ways an­swer his ques­tions, they never failed fully to dis­cuss his in­quiries and in ev­ery other pos­si­ble way to as­sist him in his ef­forts to reach a sat­is­fac­tory so­lu­tion of the prob­lem which his alert mind had sug­gested.

124:4.3From this time on he be­came more suc­cess­ful in get­ting along with his broth­ers and sis­ters. He was in­creas­ingly tact­ful, al­ways com­pas­sion­ate and con­sid­er­ate of their wel­fare and hap­pi­ness, and en­joyed good re­la­tions with them up to the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic min­istry. To be more ex­plicit: He got along with James, Miriam, and the two younger (as yet un­born) chil­dren, Amos and Ruth, most ex­cel­lently. He al­ways got along with Martha fairly well. What trou­ble he had at home largely arose out of fric­tion with Joseph and Jude, par­tic­u­larly the lat­ter.

127:6.2Miriam, know­ing fully about the af­fair of Re­becca and know­ing how her brother had for­saken even the love of a beau­ti­ful maiden (not re­al­iz­ing the fac­tor of his fu­ture ca­reer of des­tiny), came to ide­al­ize Je­sus and to love him with a touch­ing and pro­found af­fec­tion as for a fa­ther as well as for a brother.

128:5.8And now things be­gan to hap­pen—mar­riage was in the air. James’s suc­cess in gain­ing Je­sus’ as­sent to his mar­riage em­bold­ened Miriam to ap­proach her brother-fa­ther with her plans. Ja­cob, the younger stone ma­son, one­time self-ap­pointed cham­pion of Je­sus, now busi­ness as­so­ciate of James and Joseph, had long sought to gain Miriam’s hand in mar­riage. Af­ter Miriam had laid her plans be­fore Je­sus, he di­rected that Ja­cob should come to him mak­ing for­mal re­quest for her and prom­ised his bless­ing for the mar­riage just as soon as she felt that Martha was com­pe­tent to as­sume her du­ties as el­dest daugh­ter.

128:7.10In Novem­ber a dou­ble wed­ding oc­curred. James and Esta, and Miriam and Ja­cob were mar­ried. It was truly a joy­ous oc­ca­sion. Even Mary was once more happy ex­cept ev­ery now and then when she re­al­ized that Je­sus was prepar­ing to go away. She suf­fered un­der the bur­den of a great un­cer­tainty: If Je­sus would only sit down and talk it all over freely with her as he had done when he was a boy, but he was con­sis­tently un­com­mu­nica­tive; he was pro­foundly silent about the fu­ture.

128:7.12Miriam lived next door to Mary in the home of Ja­cob, Ja­cob the el­der hav­ing been laid to rest with his fa­thers. Martha took Miriam’s place in the home, and the new or­ga­ni­za­tion was work­ing smoothly be­fore the year ended.

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.

126:3.12Be­fore the end of this year Mary saw the fam­ily funds di­min­ish­ing. She turned the sale of doves over to James. Pres­ently they bought a sec­ond cow, and with the aid of Miriam they be­gan the sale of milk to their Naz­a­reth neigh­bors.

128:3.1This year the fi­nan­cial pres­sure was slightly re­laxed as four were at work. Miriam earned con­sid­er­able by the sale of milk and but­ter; Martha had be­come an ex­pert weaver. The pur­chase price of the re­pair shop was over one third paid. The sit­u­a­tion was such that Je­sus stopped work for three weeks to take Si­mon to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, and this was the longest pe­riod away from daily toil he had en­joyed since the death of his fa­ther.

127:4.8Miriam was a well-bal­anced and level-headed daugh­ter with a keen ap­pre­ci­a­tion of things no­ble and spir­i­tual. Martha was slow in thought and ac­tion but a very de­pend­able and ef­fi­cient child. Baby Ruth was the sun­shine of the home; though thought­less of speech, she was most sin­cere of heart. She just about wor­shiped her big brother and fa­ther. But they did not spoil her. She was a beau­ti­ful child but not quite so comely as Miriam, who was the belle of the fam­ily, if not of the city.