Song Lyrics

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I've just finished writing a book of stories, songs and scripture titled The Gate of Beautiful. I posted the lyrics to one of the songs, The Carpenter's Son. This is the commentary that goes with it.

Brian is twelve years old. He’s our neighbor Mike and Nelda’s son. I don’t talk with
Brian much. Sometimes, he will ring our doorbell and politely ask if he and his friends can bsketball in our driveway, using the hoop and backboard we have. He’s always very
polite and well-mannered: a sweet kid. I imagine that Christ’s neighbors thought much the
same of him. Jesus didn’t ride a skateboard or have a Play Station. His life was much
simpler at Brian’s age. I imagine that his father Joseph was already teaching him the craft
of working with wood, and whatever toys he had, either he or Joseph most likely made.

Brian is almost the age that Jesus was when the story of Christ’s life is interrupted. The
screen goes black when Christ was thirteen, and we don’t see him again until he was thirty.
In those years, Christ grew to manhood and most likely worked with his father as a carpenter. He had to be a familiar figure in town. People knew him as Jesus, the carpenter’s son. But, he wasn’t just the carpenter’s son. He was God’s son. I can’t even imagine how difficult it must have been for those who’d watched Jesus growing up to believe that he was the son of God. It would be like Brian telling me when he was thirty that he was the son of God. “What do you mean; you’re the son of God? You used to
shoot baskets in my driveway.” That had to be the reaction when word began to spread that Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah.

What a blessing it is for us to know Christ through the scriptures. We know how the story ends. It must have been an enormous test of faith for those who knew Christ as the “kid next door,” when he was growing up to accept him as the Messiah. It makes you stop and take a second look at the kid shooting baskets in your driveway.

Jerry Rasmussen

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