Growing in Wisdom and Stature

The sound of a saw on wood. Chickens in the yard. A mother calling a son in for supper. For about eighteen years, this is the life of the Son of God. And the Bible tells it in just two verses.

We have just watched twelve-year-old Jesus astonish the teachers in the temple. He has told his mother that he must be in his Father's house. You might expect what comes next to be a grand public life, a boy wonder teaching in Jerusalem. But that is not what Luke tells us. Instead the family walks home to Nazareth. Back to the little hill village in Galilee. Back to the workshop, the well, the fields, and the small stone house.

Luke says Jesus went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. In other words, he obeyed his parents. The one who spoke of his Father's house came home and did what Mary and Joseph asked. He fetched water. He helped with the younger children; the Gospels tell us that later he had brothers, James, Joses, Judas and Simon, and sisters too. And Luke adds a lovely detail about Mary. She kept all these sayings in her heart. She remembered the angel, the shepherds, Simeon in the temple, and now this. She held them and thought about them, year after year.

Later, when Jesus was grown, people in Nazareth would ask, is not this the carpenter? So we know he learned a trade, probably at Joseph's side. The word used means a craftsman or builder, someone who worked with wood and perhaps stone. He would have made ploughs and yokes, doors and roof beams, tables and benches. He knew how a yoke should fit an ox so it would not rub. He knew the weight of a beam. Years later he would say, take my yoke upon you, for my yoke is easy. He knew what a well-made yoke felt like.

Then comes the verse that sums up all those hidden years. Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. Wisdom: his mind and understanding grew. Stature: his body grew, taller and stronger. In favour with God: his Father delighted in him. And in favour with man: people liked him. He was a good neighbour, a good son, a good worker. The Son of God did not skip childhood. He grew up, step by step, just as we do.

Just a few miles from Nazareth stood the city of Sepphoris. The historian Josephus tells us that Herod Antipas, ruler of Galilee during Jesus' youth, rebuilt and fortified Sepphoris and made it the ornament of all Galilee. So Jesus grew up within an hour's walk of a busy city being rebuilt, even though his own home was a quiet village.

Growing in Wisdom and Stature. You'll find it in Luke chapter two, verses fifty-one and fifty-two. The quiet years were not wasted years. God was at work in the ordinary days. So here is a question to carry with you. How are you growing this year, in wisdom, in body, with God, and with the people around you?