How is it that ye sought me? Do you not know that I can never be lost,
that I can never be lost by any one, even those who will bury me under
the earth? I will be everywhere where any one believes in me, even if
they do not see me with their eyes. I cannot be lost from any man, by
any man, provided that he hold me in his heart. I shall not be lost
alone in the desert nor alone on the waters of the lake, nor alone in
the garden of olives, nor alone in the tomb.
“And who is this father of whom you speak to me? He is the legal father,
the human father, but my real Father is in heaven. He is the Father who
spoke to the patriarchs face to face, who put words into the mouths of
the prophets. I know what He told them of me, His eternal wishes, the
laws He has given to His people, the covenant which He has signed with
all men. If I am to do what He has commanded me, I must be busy about
what is truly His. What is a legal, temporal tie confronted with a
mystic, spiritual and eternal bond?”
THE WOODWORKER
But the hour for really leaving His home had not come for Jesus. The
voice of John had not yet been heard; and with His father and mother He
once more went along the road to Nazareth and returned to Joseph’s shop
to help him in his trade.
Jesus did not go to school to the Scribes nor to the Greeks. But He did
not lack for teachers. Three teachers He had, greater than all the
learned: work, nature and the Book.
It must never be forgotten that Jesus was a working man and the adopted
son of a working man: that He was born poor, among people who worked
with their hands; before He gave out His gospel He earned His daily
bread with the labor of His hands. Those hands which blest the
simple-hearted, which cured the lepers, which gave light to the blind,
which brought the dead to life, those hands which were pierced with
nails upon the cross, were hands which had been bathed with the sweat of
labor, hands which had known the numbness of work, hands which were
callous with work, hands which had held the tools of work, which had
driven nails into wood, the hands of a working man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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