The Obscure Years VII

It is impossible to consider the obscure years in Nazareth without wondering about the relationship that likely existed between John, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth who would later be know as John the Baptist, and Jesus who first visited John when both were in the wombs of their mothers.  While Elizabeth was much older than Mary, it was to Elizabeth that Mary went when the angel told her that she would miraculously bear a child conceived by the Spirit.  It is hard to imagine that the visit that day was the only visit the old woman and the young woman shared together.    

What seems more likely is that the two found an inseparable and mysterious bond which was a part of their lives until Elizabeth died.  Of course, they could not know in those beginning days the ways their two boys would be used by God and that one would be a messenger of the other.  It has always seemed logical to assume that there were many times when the two boys would be together and do boy things.  There is, of course, no record of such happening, but surely Elizabeth and Mary spent time together through the years they shared together.    

Each of the two heard the story of their unusual birth and each no doubt knew the story of the other.  And, because of these stories which joined them together while each was alive in the womb, they, too, likely knew an inseparable bond.  Each one must have sensed that their lives were joined together and it was probably only realized how much this was true when Jesus went to the Jordan River some thirty years after their relationship began to be baptized by the one known as John the Baptist.