WHEN MY MOTHER DIED, I had a number of regrets. I didn’t regret the fact that she had died. She had suffered with chronic pain for a very long time, and in her later years, kept asking me what possible reason there was for her to still be alive. So at the end, when her death came relatively swiftly, it felt to me like a mercy.

What I regretted was all the conversations I could have had—should have had!—with her while I still had the chance. I missed the opportunity to ask for stories that I will now never hear. I could have pointed to people in the old, faded photographs she kept of her ancestors: Mom, who’s this? Tell me about them. I could have asked for more stories of her childhood growing up in China. I could have asked for more stories about my childhood, because what I remember of my own early years is sketchy at best.

Mom died about six months after my first granddaughter was born. They never got to meet each other. Indeed, I didn’t get to meet my granddaughter until she was almost a year old, because of the pandemic that was raging through the world at that time.

But with my earlier regrets in mind, I decided to do something for my beautiful granddaughters that I wish someone had done for me: I started keeping a journal for each of them, something of a narrative history of their early years. It’s not just about the special things we did or saw together. I write more about mundane household interactions, because these are a better window into what their daily life was like. When they come of age, I’ll gift these journals to them.

What age will that be? I haven’t decided yet.

But don’t you wish you had stories like that about Jesus? What kind of boy was he? Did he play with the other kids? Was he any good at carpentry? What were things like in Joseph and Mary’s household? What did they do when Jesus fell and scraped his knee (assuming he didn’t just miraculously heal himself)? There are so many stories that could be told, stories we’ll never hear.

As we’ve seen, Matthew and Luke are the only gospel writers to give us stories of Jesus’ birth, stories told from quite different angles—and Luke is the only one to tell us a story about him as a boy. At the beginning of the story, he gives us this summary statement:

And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him. (Luke 2:40, NIV)

And at the end, he says something similar:

And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. (vs. 52)

These verses function like a frame for the story he tells in between. They highlight how, even as a boy, Jesus was wise beyond his years, demonstrating the grace and favor of God. That’s not to say that he didn’t have some growing up to do, as every child does. He grew physically, becoming stronger and taller, perhaps helping Joseph with his carpentry. He grew in favor, not only with God but with other people. Here, I imagine some of the mothers in Nazareth saying to their sons, “Why can’t you be more like Jesus?”

And he grew in wisdom. Luke illustrates this with a story:

Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. 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. When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” (vss. 41-48)

We’ve already seen how Joseph and Mary were attentive to the requirements of the Law, traveling to Jerusalem to present Jesus at the temple and complete Mary’s purification. Their piety, apparently, included the yearly practice of attending the Passover Feast in Jerusalem.

As we read in Exodus 23:14-17, all Israelite men were required to attend the three main festivals or feasts, known by a variety of names in English. The first was the Festival of Unleavened Bread, or Passover; the second was the Festival of Weeks or Harvest, which was later known as Pentecost; the third was the Festival of Ingathering, Tabernacles, or Booths, celebrating the fruit harvest. After Solomon built the temple in Jerusalem, these became pilgrimage festivals; the faithful had to journey to Jerusalem to celebrate them.

As you might imagine, not everyone obeyed the commandment consistently. To make three pilgrimages a year to Jerusalem was quite a demand for those who lived far from the city. If they had to choose just one festival, therefore, it would be the Passover, which commemorated the people’s exodus from Egypt. Luke doesn’t specifically say that Joseph and Mary didn’t attend the other festivals, but the fact that they traveled to Jerusalem every year for the Passover, and didn’t leave until the festival was over, tells us that Jesus was raised in a pious family.

We’ll look more closely at the story in the next post. What I love about it, though, is its relatability, especially from the side of the parents. Everything that Luke has told us thus far says that Joseph and Mary are people of exemplary piety who know who their son Jesus is and is destined to be. And yet, this story of losing track of your child and going into a panicked search mode is so…human. It’s a good reminder of how we might see the divine at work in the ordinary.