Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt Read Online Free

understand?"
    They were gentle, but these were clear and strange words. All the words they'd spoken were strange.
    I should have let them go on talking. I would have learned more. And I knew it was a great secret, this that they talked about. How could it not be? And as for me hearing it, they knew they'd made a mistake.
    I didn't want to sleep. I lay on my blanket trying to sleep, but sleep didn't come and I didn't want it. I never wanted it. But now my thoughts were racing. We were going home, and I had so much to think about because so much had happened, and now they were saying these strange things.
    And what had happened today? What had happened
    with Eleazer and what had happened with him, that, and the memory of the sparrows insofar as I could remember it— these were like bright shapes in my mind for which I didn't have words. I'd never felt anything before like the power that had come out of me just before Eleazer fell dead in the dust, or the power that had come out of me just before he'd risen from the mat. Son of David, Son of David, Son of David. . .
    Little by little everyone came in to sleep. The women were in their corner, and I had Little Justus snuggled up to me, Simon's youngest son. Little Salome was singing softly to Baby Esther who was, by some miracle, quiet.
    Cleopas was coughing, talking to himself but saying nothing, then sleeping again.
    I felt a hand on mine. I opened my eyes. It was James next to me, James, my elder brother.
    "What you did," he whispered.
    "Yes?"
    "Killing Eleazer, bringing him back?"
    "Yes?"
    "Never, never do that again," he said.
    "I know," I answered.
    "Nazareth is a small place," he said.
    "I know," I said.
    He turned away.
    I rolled over, my head on my arm. I closed my eyes. I stroked the head of Little Justus. Without waking he snuggled closer.
    What did I know?
    "Jerusalem," I whispered. "Where the Lord dwells in the Temple." No one heard me. Philo had told me, It is the biggest Temple in all the world. I saw the clay sparrows that I had made. I saw them spring into life, heard the flap of wings, heard my mother's breath, Joseph's cry: "No!" and they were gone, tiny dots against the sky. "Jerusalem." I saw Eleazer rise from the mat.
    Philo had said on that day when he received me in his house that the Temple was so beautiful that thousands came to see it, thousands, pagans and Jews from all the cities of the Empire, men and women journeying there to offer sacrifice to the Lord of All.
    My eyes snapped open. All around me the others slept.
    What did I think had happened in all this? A great stumbling.
    Where had that power come from? Was it still there?
    Joseph hadn't spoken one word to me about it. My mother hadn't asked me what had happened. Had we ever talked of the sparrows made on the Sabbath?
    No. No one would talk of these things. And I couldn't ask anyone, now, could I? To talk of such things outside the family, that could never happen. Any more than I could stay in the great city of Alexandria and study with Philo in his house of marble floors.
    I must be very very watchful from now on, that even in the smallest things I might misuse what was inside me, this power that could make Eleazer die and come back to life.
    Oh, it had been all very well to make everyone smile at my quickness at learning, Philo and the Teacher and the other boys, and I knew so much of the Scripture in Greek, and in Hebrew thanks to Joseph and Uncle Cleopas and Uncle Alphaeus, but this was different.
    I knew something now that was beyond what I could put into words.
    I wanted to go to Joseph, to wake him up, to ask him for help in understanding this. But I knew he'd tell me not to ask about this any more than I should ask about the other things, the things I'd heard them saying. Because this power, this
    power was somehow linked to the things they'd been saying, and to the strange talk of the Teacher which had made them all go silent and look at him. It had to be linked.
    It made me sad, so