The Obscure Years

Most of what we know about Jesus centers on the last three years of His life.  The biggest part of the story begins with His baptism and ends with the cross and the empty tomb.  The other part which is documented in the gospels is His birth, a trip to the Temple when He was twelve years old, and the fact that He grew up in Nazareth.  In between age twelve and age thirty, nothing is really known.  What is often spoken of as fact about those years is really conjecture based on likelihood.  Nazareth speaks of the obscure years of Jesus.     

The first time we see a record of Jesus being in Nazareth is shortly after the visit of Gabriel to His mother and His miraculous conception.  Historical records tell us that Nazareth was not much of a town.  No more than 400 people called it home.  Its most famous visitor was Gabriel, the angel of the Lord, and then Jesus, the Son of God.  After Mary receives the Word of Gabriel she goes to a nearby town to see her kinswoman, Elizabeth, whom she has been told is pregnant also.  The trip had a practical purpose.  It provided external validation of what Gabriel has said to her to be true.  If Elizabeth who was very old was pregnant as Gabriel had said, then all the rest he said could be true as well.   

It is on this visit to Elizabeth that we see the first evidence that the Son of God has become flesh to dwell among us.  The gospel writer Luke speaks of that moment midway through the first chapter, "In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.  When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb.  And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and exclaimed with a loud voice, 'Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.' "  (Luke 1:39-42)  This is Luke's announcement that Jesus had come.  The obscure years had begun.