After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. (Luke 2:46–47)
The story of Jesus as a boy at the Temple in Luke 2:40–52 is the only biblical account we have of Jesus’ childhood. Even the story of his birth is told in only two of the four Gospels, Mark and Luke. And none of the other Gospels besides Luke have any stories of his childhood at all.
We do get a few hints of what he was doing as he grew up. In Mark 6:3 there is a reference to Jesus being a carpenter. In the parallel passage in Matthew 13:55 it is Joseph who is the carpenter. Apparently he learned his adoptive father’s trade—which would have been common for boys of that era. It appears that outwardly, Jesus was mostly just an ordinary craftsman, living like other boys and men of his time and culture.
If this were not so, more stories of Jesus’ childhood would have survived. It seems that what we have in the two birth stories and this one vignette of Jesus at the age of twelve are the only stories of the Lord’s young life that were noteworthy enough to have survived in people’s memories to be recorded later. The rest of our stories of Jesus all come from the few intense years of his public ministry, which began when he was about thirty years old (see Luke 3:23) and lasted only three years, until his death by crucifixion.
For more on the boy Jesus, please click here to read on.
In the previous post, I responded to the question “
The article “
The pair of side-by-side photos, shared by Pflugerville Public Library in Texas, aims to provide a visual of what library shelves might look like if everything containing subject matter that could cause someone discomfort was to be removed.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 