Although the nativity story is probably the best known and most widely celebrated in the Christian tradition, the bible contains very little detail of Jesus’ childhood and growing up. Only two of the four gospel accounts even mention his younger years at all!

Luke and Matthew describe the events before and after his birth, including the family’s exile in Egypt to escape mortal danger. Luke has one further narrative about 12-year-old Jesus visiting the temple in Jerusalem, and that’s 30 years of growing up squeezed into four chapters, with a lot of gaps to try and fill.

I’ve been contemplating this as part of a prayer exercise devised by St Ignatius which invites the reader to reflect and pray using imagination in stories like this where there is little to go on.  For me this has proved to be both insightful and life-giving as I reflect on Jesus’ early life.

Based on what we do know, and what we can glean from the context, I imagine Jesus growing up as part of a rural faith community.  His family would have attended synagogue and like other Jewish boys, he would have learned the scriptures from an early age. It seems that he was a confident 12-year-old, and was obedient to his parents.

Jesus must have felt the trauma his family experienced while he was in the womb, and then as an infant escaping danger. He would have needed a loving and supportive environment to terms with that later. Like many families, I imagine Mary and Joseph retelling the stories about his birth and his early childhood over and over until they became the narratives that formed him emotionally and spiritually. There would have been more upheaval later when his father died, and being the first born he would certainly have been expected to take on extra responsibilities.

Throughout all of this time, I see his mother Mary as a shining example of faith and grace, guiding and supporting him through the uncertainties of growing up and, like all good parents, helping him figure out who he was to become.

On reflection, it seems that I have more in common with the younger Jesus than I first thought!

I too was raised in a believing family within a faith community that taught me biblical principles and values. My parents also lost me in public when I was young, and I also lost a parent long before I expected to!  They say shared experience brings people closer, and that’s certainly been true for me.

For many years I have found it easy to relate to the grown-up Jesus as a leader, role model and teacher who is really worth following. But imagining him as a child and a young adult gives me a whole new perspective on his humanity, and how much like me he was, and how much like him I am.

And that makes him even more relatable - on a whole new dimension!

Nigel Hemming,

Senior Pastor,

Winchester Vineyard Church