There is a TV commercial where a little girl is sitting in the drivers seat and her father in leaning in the window giving instructions on how to be safe. When the picture backs up, you see that the little girl is, in fact, a grown woman — but to her father she will always be the little girl who needs protection. While this example is relatively benign we can keep people in the box as we first knew them. An old high school chum who was a cut up back then we can stereotype as the same person several decades later. That apparently is what happenedto Jesus when he went back to Nazareth. “Where did this man get all this? Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary.” The Nazarenes who knew the scruffy-faced boy had a difficult time recognizing the God-sent man. This is a good reminder to us to meet people, particularly people we’ve known for a long time both friends and family members, as they are today. God has been at work in them and there is an excellent chance they have grown, as Jesus did, “in wisdom, age and grace.”
