| THE NEIGBORS |
| Jesus grew up in a little town named Nazareth with other boys and girls. They laughed and played together and went to school together. Later they were teenagers together. That's when they decided what kind of job to have so that, when they were all grown up, they could buy their own food, clothes, transportation and place to live. "I'm going to be a carpenter just like my father, Joseph" Jesus told his old friends. He learned to make tables and benches, cabinets and doors and even toys for younger girls and boys. Jesus learned how to go up the high hills and pick out good trees to cut down for lumber, then how to drag them down the hill pulled by a strong oxen or two large donkeys. He also knew how to split the rounded sides off to get straight boards. Jesus was a carpenter until he was 30 years old. Then he moved away and began traveling and telling people about God's love for them, and healing them. Jesus became very popular everywhere. Once he went back to the little town of Nazareth for a visit. His sisters still lived in Nazareth because they had married young men there. On the Sabbath day, Jesus went to the old synagogue where he had worshipped growing up. "Would you read out of the Bible for us?" they asked. Jesus read where a prophet told about Jesus many years before Jesus was born. It said God would send someone to heal the sick and tell of God's love. That someone was Jesus. He thought they would be happy. His old friends were not sure God sent him because they had known Jesus as a little boy. So he healed some people of little things like colds as proof his words were true. Someone Jesus grew up with announced to the others that Jesus didn't do very good healings. Jesus got up and said there were many there with serious diseases but they wouldn't ask him to heal them. Everyone got mad. "It is Jesus' fault. He can't really heal people. He's just a pretender." "He's just ordinary," someone else said. "He's not from God." They got so mad that they dragged Jesus to the edge of the cliff where their synagogue was to throw him off and kill him. But Jesus escaped. Just because Jesus looked human, it doesn't mean he was only human. He proved he was also God by his amazing miracles. He made diseases go away, made handicaps go away, and even raised dead people back to life. Do you sometimes get mad at people for being right? Try being happy they told you the truth. |