When the angel told me that Mary was going to have a very special baby I never expected this sort of disaster.  He’s the son of God – and now we’ve lost him!  He’s always been so easy to handle, easy to find when you need him, obedient when you tell him to do anything.  Yet not one of his brothers or sisters has ever caused this much trouble!

Hopefully we’ll be able to make it back to Jerusalem by midday, and then we can start looking for him.  But how do you find a 12-year-old boy in a big city?  We’ll be passing by the place where we camped, down in the Kidron Valley, so we can start there.  See whether anyone’s still there to ask, or if anyone nearby knows anything about him.
It would have been so easy to check that he was with the party before we left, but it didn’t occur to me.  It seems a silly thing to say, but I would have trusted him to be where he was meant to be almost more than I would trust myself.  Mary says that it didn’t occur to her either.  We rely on him more than we would rely on any grownups that we know.

So why wasn’t he with us?  He’s just reached the first stage of adulthood, and straightaway he does the first irresponsible thing of his life.

No, that’s not fair.  I still don’t know exactly what’s happened, so I can’t condemn him.  And I shouldn’t criticise him, anyway: I’m the one who’s meant to be looking after him, not the other way around.  I wouldn’t dream of relying on any other 12-year-old to look after himself all the time and make sure he was always where we needed him to be, always ready to travel with the party.  I’m so annoyed with myself: I didn’t even try to talk to him before we left.  No quick recap of what was happening or anything.  In fact, as it turns out, we couldn’t have talked to him anyway, because he wasn’t there.  It seems that he’d already left the camp by the time we set off.  In fact, nobody is even sure that he was there overnight.  For all we know, he might not have been in camp all night.  Sightseeing?  A secret rendezvous?  Playing truant?  We just don’t know, and none of it makes sense.

Yesterday morning we were concentrating on everything else that we needed to do right then.  The feast was over and it was time to go home.  Our minds were on all the little things that need to be dealt with: packing the tents, the cooking utensils, clothing and everything else the family needed – generally making sure that we didn’t leave anything behind.  Ugh!  “Didn’t leave anything…” – but instead we ended up leaving Jesus behind!  Because the holiday was over, my mind had been straying back to Nazareth during the night.  There’s a yoke for Phinehas that I must finish smoothing before… but now this!  We’re going to be home at least a day late, maybe more.  And what if it’s not just some foolish juvenile prank?  What if he’s been hurt somehow?  Or got into trouble with Roman soldiers?  And what if we can’t find him easily?  I’ve heard rumours that some rich people arrange to kidnap young girls and boys to keep as servants or even to sell as slaves.  Or what if he’s met some fast-talking crooks who’ve sweet-talked him into joining them in their nefarious work?  I’m certain that he wouldn’t do that if he knew what was happening, but he’s only 12 years old!

We managed about half an hour of walking yesterday evening after we discovered that he was missing, but then it got dark, and at this time of month the moon doesn’t rise until the start of the third watch,[1] so we had to stop for a while.  We took the opportunity to get some rest, hoping to sleep, but neither of us slept much.  How can you sleep when your oldest son is lost?

When the moon rose, we began again, but it’s a waning moon, so we haven’t been making very good time.

Once it gets light we’ll be able to move faster, but I don’t think that we’ll be able to get back to Jerusalem until about the fourth hour,[2] maybe even later.  And by then, Jesus will already have been lost in Jerusalem for a day and a half.

There really is nothing we can do other than keep walking and keep praying.

I wonder how Jesus is?  It’s a cold night and he’s never been all by himself before, having to look after himself completely.

How could I have done such a stupid thing?  And how could he…?  No, Joseph, don’t condemn him – at least not until you know what actually happened.

Oh, great God of Israel, please help us to find your son!

When we arrive, we’ll go straight to the place where we camped and ask around.  See if anyone knows anything about him.  But what do we do if that doesn’t turn up anything?  I don’t want to think about it, but I must.  He seemed to like the Pool of Siloam, and there are people who stay there all the time, so they might remember seeing him.  Where else?

The Roman barracks.  Could he have gone to watch the soldiers?  No, he wasn’t very interested in any of that.  Herod’s palace?  Same.  The High Priest’s house and the other grand houses?  Not likely.  Golgotha?  I heard that there were to be some executions there soon.  Maybe it was yesterday.  Maybe he went to watch the criminals suffer.  Plenty of people get pleasure from that, but no, I don’t think Jesus would.

He did seem interested in the work they’re doing on the temple.  Most boys like watching people building – I know that I always have.  I used to watch my father building and any other building work I could, and the work on the temple is on such a huge scale that it’s fascinating, particularly the way they move some of those enormous stones with derricks and inch them so carefully into exactly the right place.

But sometimes I have to remember that Jesus might not have the same interests as I do, since he’s not physically my son.  I’m just the one God has relied on to look after his son.

And now I’ve lost him.

Is that a light on the horizon?

No, I suppose not.  Can we go any faster?  I don’t want one of us to get injured, because that wouldn’t help anyone.  The road is quite rough and it’s hard to see in this moonlight.  Mary is very quiet.  She’s probably thinking, thinking, thinking too, poor lass.  She might even feel that she carries a greater responsibility than I do since she’s the one who actually gave birth to this miraculous child!  If only she could relax, stop worrying – but of course, that strong sense of responsibility is part of the reason why I wanted to marry Mary in the first place.  She’s an amazing woman.  Many men say that their wife is the best woman there is, but I think I can say it with more confidence, and more reason, than anyone else I know – maybe than anyone else in history.

It’s hard to tell how far we’re getting in this moonlight.  I’m hoping that we’ll get to Jericho around dawn, then it’ll be a stiff walk up to Jerusalem.

Where is Jesus now?  Can we move any quicker?

 

 

Well, we didn’t make it to Jericho until an hour or so after dawn.  It wasn’t that anything in particular went wrong, just that we couldn’t move as quickly as I’d hoped.  Dim moonlight does give enough light to travel by, but only just – you have to strain constantly to see; concentrating, focussing, engrossed in discerning the almost invisible hollows and bumps in a barely-seen but rough surface.  Shifting shadows play across your path as breezes move the shrubs and trees that border the road, particularly when the moon is lower in the sky.

Nevertheless, we made it through the night safely, and travelled far enough that we should be able to reach Jerusalem today instead of losing the entire day in travel.  Now we’re climbing towards Jerusalem as fast as we can.

Neither of us wants to talk about what we’ll find when we get there.

 

 

It’s just past noon and we’ve almost reached the place where we camped during the Passover.  Jerusalem is much too crowded during the feast for everyone to stay within the walls.  Each year, we camp in the same place with relatives and friends from Nazareth: a garden called Gethsemane, just across the Brook Kidron from the city.

Jesus knows that garden like the back of his hand, so maybe he’ll have stayed there, in amongst the trees, once he worked out that we’d left without him. After all, he must know that we’d come back for him.

It’s impossible to describe how I feel at the moment.  Such a mixture of hope and despair, of guilt and anger, of confidence and doubt.  I’m sure that we’ll find Jesus soon… but what if we don’t?