We were now in the area called Galilee.
By mid-afternoon, we reached the Sea of Galilee, a huge lake that was gorgeous and full of tasty fish. At least, Adlai thought it was huge. David had seen the Great Lakes, though, and was less impressed with a lake of which he could see the other side. This was the area where Jesus built his ministry. He preached mainly near the north and western parts of the sea, but we were at the south.
Even though Adlai had insisted we pray from time to time, and I wanted to respect his wishes, I still had no belief that Jesus Christ was any kind of supernatural son of God.
And here I have to say: It really made no difference to my excitement. He was the most famous person in history. We started to walk west. Adlai knew perfectly how to find his way to Nazareth.
The longer we walked, the faster the pace I set.
There was no question that there was a man named Jesus. His lineage was well known, his teachings passed down for many generations, and his crucifixion well documented. You don’t need to trust the Bible on this. There’s other historical documents that discuss all this.
He was real.
And I was close to him.
I hoped.
Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but he grew up in Nazareth. When he was twelve years old, he visited Jerusalem. That’s all the Bible reveals about him until he reached prime teaching age, about thirty, when he formed his ministry.
I really hoped he had stayed with his parents in Nazareth. Most historians thought that was most likely, and that he would learn carpentry or stone-work from his father, Joseph.
We hurried even more as I thought of meeting Joseph and Mary, whose baby had arrived in a manger. Not on Christmas, but perhaps in the spring. Nobody knew exactly when Jesus was really born.
It was late afternoon when we reached Nazareth. The village was very small, with most houses built of stones piled together. There were wooden additions as well, and I wondered how many of them might have been added by Joseph.
We stopped short of entering the village while I tried to estimate its size. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought there might be 500 people or so living there. Surely no more.
As we entered the village, I could see men hard at work doing lots of different chores: herding donkeys, pounding stones, hacking wood with something that looked like an ax.
And it took no time at all to find him.
Even if I hadn’t known there was something special about him, it would have been dead obvious. Nobody could have missed him.
He looked to be about fifteen years old, skinny, which wasn’t unusual because everyone in the village was thin, tall, though, certainly taller than any other man I could see. He was close to six feet, which made him a giant.
We walked closer, slowly. I knew I was staring at him, but I couldn’t help it.
Jesus had changed so many things in the world around him. He had more followers in the 21st century than he would possibly imagine, more churches founded in his name than would seem conceivable, more charities doing more good… and more crimes committed in his name.
He stood out because he was tall, but that wasn’t all.
He smiled, a broad grin, looking right at me. I felt him looking deeply into my soul as we moved closer. I believe everybody who approached him would feel the same.
The single thing that set him aside from everybody else was the color of his eyes.
He had bright blue eyes that almost seemed to glow. Every other person I’d met in the middle east had dark eyes, mostly deep brown.
Nobody had blue eyes.
His long hair was blonde. Not the dark colors of every other person around.
It was almost like a man from Sweden had been teleported to Galilee. His eyes and his smile captured me as nobody else had ever done.
I immediately understood why the people gave him a chance to minister to them. They would be as hypnotized as I was.
As I got closer, he held out his hand and I gratefully held it.
“Welcome,” he said.
I hesitated and then asked, “What is your name?”
“I am Yeshua. I am the one you seek.”
I remembered that Jesus was also called Joshua, and the Aramaic way to pronounce Joshua was Yeshua.
For several seconds, I couldn’t speak. Finally, my partner soul took over. “I am Adlai.”
Chapter 15
Erika Sabo was nineteen years old—no longer a child, but sometimes her mind had fleeting visions of the same fantasies and dreams she had had as a young girl. She would never admit to anybody that she still craved a Disney movie from time to time or that she liked to suck on a strawberry lollipop when she was alone in her room. Nobody needed to know any of that.
Her parents were Eileen and Henry Sabo. They’d both been born in Chicago, and neither liked living in such a massive city. When Eileen got an email asking if she’d be interested in working in Aynsville, New York, she never really thought twice, and much to her great relief, neither did Henry. She was an accountant, and he was a school teacher, both skills quite marketable at the time, so they packed their bags and headed east.
A month after they settled in, Eileen found out she was pregnant, which was very much not in anybody’s plans. She wasn’t a regular church-goer or even discussed her religious beliefs with anybody (such things being her own personal story, and nobody else needed to know), but on one thing she was very clear: If God wanted her to have a child, a child she would have.
“Are you sure?” asked Henry. “We’ve just gotten settled, and we don’t have to do this if we don’t want to.”
She only had to tell him one time, and he never broached the subject again.
However, when Erika was two years old, Henry decided that being a father really wasn’t his thing. When he left, he told Eileen it wasn’t her (which was true, it was Erika), but he wasn’t ready for a family. Both were only twenty-six, and he wanted more out of life.
Eileen didn’t have a lot to suggest to him, and in the end, she realized she wouldn’t miss him at all. They’d outgrown each other, and really, she surprised herself by wishing him well.
The only slight discomfort was that Henry moving back to Chicago meant Eileen and Erika were the only black people who lived in the neighborhood. Oh, there were a few others farther away, way over on the other side of Aynsville, but none nearby.
Eileen didn’t exactly mind that. She wondered if it would affect Erika in some way, as if the divorce would rob her of some sacred birthright.
Two years later, Eileen met Chad Parcher. Chad worked in the same office she did, and one day he shyly asked if she would like to go to dinner.
Eileen had never dated a white man before, but she’d blurted out a “Yes” before her mind managed to even think about that.
A year later, they were married.
Erika was five at the wedding ceremony and was the ring bearer. She grew to love her step-father, especially as phone calls from Henry grew less and less frequent.
By the time she was nineteen, it’d been four years since her natural father had contacted her. Chad was the only Dad that mattered.
Not the only Father, but the only Dad.
Earlier in this book, I kept back a couple details, figuring they fit better here.
Erika had bright blonde streaks of hair mixed randomly in with the coal black of the rest of her hair. People who met her thought she’d done something with dye or a special treatment from a hair stylist to give that appearance. However, that’s not the case. Erika would never do anything to change her appearance, because that reeked of vanity, a sin of which she was clearly not guilty. Some of her hair turned blonde when she hit puberty. She was as surprised as anybody.