There is a famous oil painting called “Christ Teaching in The Temple,” by Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890).

The painting gets it wrong. It comes from an era when religious people were still uneasy with the notion that Jesus was like the rest of us. In this picture the young Jesus is standing in the midst of the elders looking very wise, obviously delivering a lecture.

Jesus is talking and pointing and they are listening. He had, no doubt, appeared to instruct them in the law, as if he knew what they didn’t. But that’s not what the text says. They found him, says Luke, “listening to the teachers and asking them questions.”

Jesus was not the authority, he was the student. He was there to listen and learn.

Now it is true that the religious leaders were impressed by how much he knew, and by how he answered their questions. But there is nothing in this text which indicates he was a precocious know-it-all.

Thanks to Charles H. Bayer for sharing.

Think of some recent conversations where YOU were there to listen and learn. When was the last time YOU came across as a “Know-It-All?”

THIS NEW YEAR, BE THE REASON SOMEONE BELIEVES IN THE GOODNESS OF GOD!

Please check out my new book of poems: A POEM A DAY TO PRAY  2025.   https://treatsforthesoul.org/a-poem-a-day-to-pray/