.

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.

<u>There's More of God Since Jesus Went Back.</u>

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 brok