The ceaselessness of His labors those public years suggests habits of industry acquired during those long Nazareth years.  He was used to working hard and being kept busy.  It would seem that He had the care of His mother after the home was broken up.  At the very end He makes provision for her.  John understands the allusion and takes her to his own home.  He must have thought a great deal of John to trust His mother to his care.  Could there be finer evidence of friendship than giving His friend John such a trust?

Jesus was a homeless man.  Forced from the home village by His fellow townsmen, for those busy years he had no quiet home spot of His own to rest in.  And He felt it.  How He would have enjoyed a home of His own, with His mother in it with him!  No more pathetic word comes from His lips than that touching His homelessness—­foxes have holes, and the birds of the air nests, but the Son of Man hath neither hole nor nest, burrowed or built, in ground or tree.

And Jesus knew the sharp discipline of waiting.  He knew what it meant to be going a commonplace, humdrum, tread-mill round while the fires are burning within for something else.  He knew, and forever cast a sweet soft halo over all such labor as men call drudgery, which never was such to Him because of the fine spirit breathed into it.  Drudgery, commonplaceness is in the spirit, not the work.  Nothing could be commonplace or humdrum when done by One with such an uncommon spirit.

There’s More of God Since Jesus Went Back.

I have tried to think of Him coming into young manhood in that Nazareth home.  He is twenty now, with a daily round something like this:  up at dawn likely—­He was ever an early riser—­chores about the place, the cow, maybe, and the kindling and fuel for the day, helping to care for the younger children, then off down the narrow street, with a cheery word to passers-by, to the little low-ceilinged carpenter shop, for—­eight hours?—­more likely ten or twelve.  Then back in the twilight; chores again, the evening meal, helping the children of the home in difficulties that have arisen to fill their day’s small horizon, a bit of quiet talk with His mother about family matters, maybe, then likely off to the hilltop to look out at the stars and talk with the Father; then back again, slipping quietly into the bedroom, sharing sleeping space in the bed with a brother.  And then the sweet rest of a laboring man until the gray dawn broke again.

And that not for one day, every day, a year of days—­years.  He’s twenty-five now, feeling the thews of his strength; twenty-seven, twenty-nine, still the old daily round.  Did no temptation come those years to chafe a bit and fret and wonder and yearn after the great outside world?  Who that knows such a life, and knows the tempter, thinks he missed those years, and their subtle opportunity?  Who that knows Jesus thinks that He missed such an opportunity to hallow forever, fragantly hallow, home, with its unceasing round of detail, and to cushion, too, its every detail with a sweet strong spirit?  Who thinks He missed that chance of fellowship with the great crowd of His race of brothers?