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Christy McDougall The Bible
I
have seen him before,‖ he whispered. ―The moment I heard him speak I knew it. It was nearly twenty years ago— he was a child—but there is no mistaking the eyes of him. I have never forgotten it, though I thought I had.‖
speaking to a small group ever have forgotten his of people near them. eyes? They were the eyes of something ancient and ―That child, ten or twelve wise, not the eyes of years old, speaking like an something that has lived old man after years of only twelve short years on study and wisdom. One this earth. day, just after the Feast, there was a commotion in ―He spoke to Gamaliel as a corner where several of if they were peers, the elders were gathered. consulting together over We all crowded in to hear, some question in the Law. ―Forgotten what?‖ and then I saw who they The child asked questions whispered his friend. The were gathered around. as if he already knew the two men were giving a Not some venerable old answers and wanted to very good impression of sage but a child, a young provoke some new being in grave and boy. Unremarkablethought in his hearers. He important conference and looking, dressed in the asked, ‗Why does the being completely unaware humble clothes of some LORD forbid adultery, of the young man child from the country, and why does He hate supposedly in disgrace but his eyes—How could I divorce?‘ He asked, ‗Why
do we not wear clothing made of two kinds of material?‘ He asked, ‗Why did Jacob wrestle with a stranger in the darkness?‘ Why, why, why? He wouldn‘t be satisfied with answers that explained away the surface of a thing but insisted on plumbing to the depths and bringing to light its very soul, so that we had to search inside ourselves for answers we had never known we knew or could come up with. He was teaching us how to question and how to understand, we who had spent our whole lives