Unexplainable Jesus: 10 Days To Rediscovering The God You Thought You KnewSample

My daughter is about to turn fourteen. Life with her is hysterical giggles one minute and solemn contemplation the next. She vacillates between childhood and adulthood faster than the wind shifts. 

We are only given one small snapshot into Jesus’ childhood and it is when He was about my daughter’s age. Maybe that’s why the event strikes me so deeply. Here we see the very beginning of Jesus becoming a man. 

There were three pilgrimage feasts in Jewish life: Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Ingathering. The law required the Jewish people to come to Jerusalem three times per year for these feasts. In Jesus’ day, most devout Jews living in Israel would come to all three, but if they could only attend one, it was generally Passover. 

This was the largest of all pilgrimage feasts and Jews from all over the known world would converge upon the city. Villagers traditionally caravanned to and from the city in large groups, as protection from bandits along the road. Such appears to be the case with Mary and Joseph, and they assumed Jesus was somewhere within their large traveling party. 

I wish I could think of a modern-day analogy to paint the picture as to what is happening here. Imagine an inner-city child, or maybe an immigrant who had barely been schooled, sitting on the steps of a seminary asking the theology professors profound questions and responding back to their statements with unmistakably wise answers. What would these highly educated theologians think of this? 

While Jesus obviously could have become the next rabbinic student, dialoguing with the best of them, He instead returned home to His small village in Nazareth, learning carpentry from His father. How beautiful that God in the flesh made His dwelling among the craftsman instead of the religious elite. In the sheep pens and the wheat fields, Jesus experienced the glory of God, not the grandeur of the temple. 

One of the most unexplainable things about Jesus is that we can always find Him in the midst of the everyday. Suddenly, He is there in the most unexpected and regular of places. And with His presence comes an unexplainable peace. Pause and ask Jesus to reveal Himself to you in your everyday, ordinary life. Ask Him for eyes to see Him right where you are.