NORTH CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH UCC
JANUARY 5, 2023
We hope you enjoy this week's News for the Pews!

The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world...The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 
- Gospel of John 1: 9, 14

This coming Sunday, we will be bridging Scriptures that take us from the time Jesus was an infant or toddler, to the time he is full-grown and baptized. It is a huge jump of thirty or more years, a life-span for which we know very little about Jesus.  It is notable because, for the rest of us, the years between age two and age thirty are the years when we learn the most. During those years, we learn the every-day practical aspects of life by observation, having experiences, and by trial and error, mostly under the wing of our elders, and in cahoots with our friends. In school, we learn by reading and exercising our ability to think conceptually, as well as tap into the accumulated knowledge and wisdom from a much wider circle, a circle that stretches back generations and encompasses histories and scholarship from around the world.  
    Not knowing about those years in Jesus' life, I feel deprived -- my own life experience during those years as a child growing up in the old woods and farmlands of Connecticut was so vivid, so awe-filling that I would not trade those years for the world.  I wonder how Jesus felt during his own learning years -- what filled him with awe...did he lie out under the night sky and watch for shooting stars? Were his mother's honey cakes so sweet that he ate so many he got a stomach ache? As he was learning carpentry at his father's side, was he so eager to prove himself that he cut his finger on a sharp edge? Like me, when he lost a tooth, did he make a wish on it?
    No, we don't have any real insight into those growing and learning years of Jesus. Is it because we don't need to know every time he skinned a knee or got into mischief?
    In preparing for worship this week, though, I noticed a thread, a thread that seemed to tie the years between infancy and ministry together. the Gospel accounts draw the thread to close that gap closed in the ellipsis from Gabriel's announcements of Jesus' impending birth, to the Child Messiah in the manger, to his circumcision in the Temple, and his baptism.  The thread woven through is his name:  Yeshua in Hebrew (Yeh-shu-a), which is a version of Joshua that means “salvation.” 
    As the Gospel of John tells us, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....In him was life, and that life was the Light of all humankind. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." The assurance that an infant among us comes with such a Love for us that it surpasses all understanding. And so, all those lost years fade away, dwarfed by his unquenchable saving Grace...Jesus, our Savior.  Hallelujah! 
 

Peace & Blessings,