Growing Up in Nazareth

A small boy runs barefoot down a dusty village lane, chasing the goats, laughing. His mother calls him in for supper. Nobody in the village thinks there is anything unusual about him at all.

So much has happened since Gabriel first visited Mary. A baby leaping for joy in Elizabeth's womb. A long road to Bethlehem. A manger. Shepherds and angels. And in the temple, old Simeon and Anna, recognising the child and praising God. Now, Luke tells us, when they had done everything the law of the Lord required, Mary and Joseph returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. Back north. Back home. Back to ordinary life.

Nazareth was a small village on a hillside in lower Galilee. A cluster of simple stone houses. A spring where the women drew water. Olive trees, small fields, terraces of vines. Families who had known each other for generations. Joseph would have gone back to his work as a builder, a craftsman. Mary would have kept house, ground grain, baked bread, and cared for her little son. Luke says nothing grand about these years. There are no more angels in the sky. Just a family, in a village, living faithfully before God.

And in the middle of all that ordinary life, Luke tells us, “the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him.” Jesus grew. He really grew, like every child does. He learned to walk and to talk. He learned to say his prayers and to recite the scriptures. Perhaps he watched Joseph shape wood and stone, and learned to use the tools himself. He got taller and stronger. And he grew inside too, filled with wisdom, the kind of wisdom that comes from knowing and loving God.

Think about that for a moment. The Son of God, the Saviour whom angels announced, spent most of his life in a small village no one had heard of, growing up quietly. For around thirty years, he lived an ordinary life. He did chores. He had neighbours. He knew what it was like to be a child, and a teenager, and a young man. And all the while, Luke says, the grace of God was upon him. God's favour rested on every ordinary day of that ordinary childhood.

Nazareth is never mentioned in the Old Testament. It was so unimportant that, years later, when a man named Nathanael heard that the Messiah came from there, he asked, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? And Luke's description of Jesus growing echoes what the first book of Samuel says about the boy Samuel, who grew in favour both with the Lord and with people.

You'll find Jesus growing up in Luke chapter two, verses thirty-nine and forty. Matthew's gospel also tells of a journey to Egypt before the family settled in Nazareth. But Luke wants us to see the quiet years: a child growing strong and wise, with God's grace on him. So here is a question to carry with you. How do you want to grow this year, in body, in mind, and in friendship with God?