Jesus Increased In Wisdom and in Years
“In the messy and beautiful physical realities of the human person, in the craziness and sublimity of family life, and in the toil and satisfaction of the working life, Jesus knew the world.” Messy and beautiful, crazy and sublime, toil and satisfaction, doesn’t that sum up the ordinary lives of us all? Yes we all know, in faith, that the man “Jesus” that walked the earth 2000 years ago was and is God, but I think we sometimes fail to grasp that he truly was human, one with us in all ways except sin. Perhaps the reason we have difficulty with understanding that, is because there is very little written about the ordinary human life Jesus lived in Nazareth, after his dramatic entrance into mankind, until the start of his public ministry beginning around age 30. However, I believe Scripture does not share this with us because the ordinary or hidden life of Jesus was unique for Him, just as our ordinary lives are each unique for us but ultimately lead each of us on a path to holiness and our own salvation.
Although Jesus’ childhood, adolescence and early adulthood are obscure and unknown it can be surmised that those years were filled with life experiences that prepared Him for His ultimate mission. As it is for us as well, it’s precisely in our ordinary, commonplace, uneventful lives that we are prepared and groomed to do God’s work in and among the lives of the people we encounter on a daily basis. Jesus was able to minister to the people and understood the pains, struggles and joys of life because he lived and experienced them himself.
During Jesus’ hidden life he was the clay in the potter’s hand, just as we all are. Everything that happens to us throughout our lives good and bad, sensational and ordinary, God uses to achieve the masterpiece He desires to accomplish in our souls to ultimately bring us to eternal life with Him in Heaven.
- If you look back on your life can you see how God has been at work leading you to where you are now?
- Jesus lived an ordinary life in Nazareth for (roughly) thirty years, in large part working as a tekton. How does his work life and occupation influence your understanding of him?
- What to you was the most surprising aspect of the description of daily life in Nazareth?
- How do you see God working in your daily life today drawing you to an even deeper relationship with Him?
Lucy Premus
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This chapter and the discussion of Jesus’ “hidden life” is very interesting and necessary if we are to fully understand Jesus when he begins his public ministry. Nazareth, a town of 200 – 400 people in Jesus’ day, and given the small houses with common areas, etc., drives home the point that everyone in town knew each other pretty well. Very well, in fact. Which explains the reaction of the home town people later on, after Jesus leaves, becomes an itinerant preacher and returns home, this time to Capernaum. You can understand their shock and dismay when the young Jesus returns home, growing daily in wisdom and in his emerging identity as the Son of God and Messiah with the powerful message of repentance and the miracles announcing the Kingdom of God. The net change in our Lord (no pun intended) must have rocked the people who knew him as a young tekton. So changed was this young man that the locals considered him “crazy.”
ReplyDeleteI agree with the reflection statement that "our ordinary lives are unique for us, but ultimately lead each of us on a path to holiness and our own salvation". If God is leading us from early on in our journey of life, and we follow His leading, we, too will grow in wisdom and grace, like Jesus did. Though we know nothing of Jesus' "hidden life", we know that at age 12, He was aware that He needed to be "about his Father's (God's) business. I think we can know for certain that His spiritual growth continued as he worked as a tekton in and around Nazareth. I tend to think of Jesus' humanity more during Lent when I reflect on the Passion and Resurrection, otherwise, I'm focused more on His divinity, so it doesn't matter to me what He was doing before He began His ministry at 30. Anything before that prepared Him for what He was born to do! Just like, in our "hidden life", we are being prepared to become children of God.
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