For the Children Who Will Lead Us

The first three chapters from my new book, Young Jesus

BEFORE WE BEGIN

Most of you came here for truth.
For clarity in a loud and crumbling world.
Today, I’m sharing something different, but no less serious.

This is Young Jesus.
A children’s book series written for the next generation of leaders—
and for the adults who remember what childhood felt like.

Below are the first three chapters of Book One.
I hope they move you.

CHAPTER 1

THE WEEPING WOOD

The sawdust made Jesus sneeze three times in a row, each one louder than the last.

"Bless you, little storm," Joseph said without looking up from his plane. The curl of cedar peeling away from the wood looked like a tiny scroll, and Jesus tried to catch it before it hit the ground. Missed.

"Why does wood smell sad?" Jesus asked, pressing his nose against the fresh-cut board.

Joseph's hands paused for just a breath. "Wood doesn't smell sad, son. It smells like cedar. Like trees. Like good hard work."

"But this one—" Jesus ran his small finger along the grain, and something cold touched the inside of his chest. Like drinking water too fast. "This one remembers something bad."

"Trees don't remember." Joseph's voice stayed patient, but Jesus heard the careful sound underneath. The same sound Mother used when he asked about the dreams where light sang his name. "Come, help me measure. Remember what we say?"

"Measure twice, cut once." Jesus took the measuring rope, but his hand stayed on the cedar board a moment longer. The cold feeling spread up his arm. Fire, his body whispered. This tree knew fire.

"SHESUS!"

Ruth's voice exploded through the doorway, followed immediately by Ruth herself—three years old and covered in what looked like flour. Or dust. Or possibly both.

"Ruth! You're supposed to be napping." Jesus dropped the rope and caught her as she barreled into his legs.

"No nap. Play." She grabbed his hand with sticky fingers. "Come see! I maked you something!"

"Made," Joseph corrected automatically. "And Jesus is helping me work."

"Pleeeeease?" Ruth turned her enormous eyes on Joseph. She'd learned that look from watching the neighbor's cat beg for scraps. It worked about as well. "I maked—made—him a present!"

Jesus glanced at the cedar board. The cold feeling was fading, leaving only the memory of something he couldn't quite name. "Can I go, Father? Just for a moment?"

Joseph sighed, but his eyes crinkled. "A moment. Then back to work. And Ruth—no more flour."

"Wasn't flour," Ruth said, pulling Jesus toward the door. "Was dust from the special jar."

"What special jar?" But Ruth was already dragging him into the courtyard, where indeed, Mother's grinding stone was covered in... something.

"Ruth, is this—"

"LOOK!" She pointed proudly at the ground where she'd used the grinding flour to draw wobbly circles. "It's you!"

Jesus tilted his head. The circles looked more like sick sheep than anything human, but Ruth's face glowed with pride.

"It's..." He knelt beside her creation. "Why is my head so big?"

"'Cause you think lots." She poked his forehead with a floury finger. "Mother says your head is full of questions. So I made it bigger for all the questions to fit."

Something warm replaced the cold in his chest. Different from the cedar feeling. This warmth felt like sunrise, like bread just out of the oven, like—

"RUTH BAT MARY!"

Mother appeared in the doorway, and the warmth in Jesus's chest immediately mixed with the very familiar feeling of uh-oh.

"Was accident?" Ruth tried, hiding behind Jesus.

Mary surveyed the destruction—grinding flour everywhere, her good stone dusted white, handprints on the walls where Ruth had steadied herself. Her jaw worked the way it did when she was counting to ten in her head. Maybe to twenty.

"Jesus, take your sister to wash. Ruth, you will help me clean every grain of this later."

"But I maked—"

"Made. And yes, I see you made... something. We'll discuss it after you wash."

Jesus took Ruth's sticky hand and led her to the water basin. Behind them, he heard Mother muttering something about "forty years in the wilderness sounding better each day."

At the basin, Ruth splashed more water on herself than in it. "Shesus?"

"Mmm?"

"Why you make that face when you touch the wood?"

Jesus paused, water dripping from his hands. "What face?"

"The hurting face. Like when I falled off the big rock but tried not to cry."

"I don't make a face."

"Do too. Your eyebrows go like this—" She scrunched her tiny face into an exaggerated frown. "And your mouth goes like this—" She turned her lips down dramatically.

"I do not look like that."

"Do too. Ask Thomas. He says you look at things like they're talking to you in secret words."

Jesus dried her face with the edge of his tunic, maybe rubbing a little harder than necessary. "Thomas talks too much."

"He likes you though. Says you're weird but nice-weird." She grabbed his face between her wet palms, forcing him to look at her. "I think you're nice-weird too."

The warm feeling came back, stronger. Ruth's hands smelled like flour and childhood and something else—like she'd been picking the wild jasmine behind the house again even though Mother told her not to.

"Ruth," he said carefully, "Do you ever... feel things? When you touch stuff?"

She tilted her head, considering. "I feeled squishy when I touched the mud yesterday."

"No, I mean... inside. In your chest."

"Oh!" Her face lit up. "Like when baby Micah smiled at me? Made my tummy feel like butterflies?"

"Maybe? But from things, not people."

Ruth's forehead wrinkled in concentration. Then she shrugged, already bored with the question. "Dunno. But one time I touched the mezuzah and my fingers felt tingly. Mother said it was 'cause I needed to wash my hands."

She wiggled free and ran back toward the house, calling over her shoulder, "Come on! Before Mother counts to MORE numbers!"

Jesus followed slowly. As he passed the workshop doorway, he saw the cedar board leaning against the wall. Just for a moment, he let his fingers brush it again.

Fire. Definitely fire. But also... after the fire, rain. Years and years of rain. And new growth. And birds—

"Jesus!" Joseph's voice, gentle but firm. "The measuring rope?"

"Coming, Father."

He picked up the rope, but something made him glance back at the road beyond their courtyard wall. A man stood there, traveler-dusty, leaning on a walking stick. Nothing unusual—many passed through Nazareth.

But the man was looking directly at Jesus. Not at the workshop. Not at Joseph. At him.

Their eyes met for one heartbeat. Two. The man nodded once—small, like acknowledging something privately confirmed—then continued walking.

"Who was that?" Jesus asked.

Joseph looked up. "Who was who?"

But the road was empty. Only dust swirling where footsteps had been.

"Never mind." Jesus turned back to the workbench. "Where should I measure?"

As Joseph showed him where to place the rope, Jesus felt something new. Not cold like the cedar's fire-memory. Not warm like Ruth's flour-portrait. Something else.

Like a tiny hum, just behind his ears. So quiet he might have imagined it.

But that night, as he lay on his sleeping mat with Ruth curled against his side like a flour-scented puppy, the hum was still there.

Waiting.

The dove carved itself in dreams he wouldn't remember. Not yet.

---

CHAPTER 2

THE DONKEY GAME

"You have to kick it HARDER!" Thomas shouted, dancing from foot to foot like he needed the toilet. "It's a Roman ball! Kick it like you're kicking Caesar!"

Jesus looked down at the leather ball—really just old rags wrapped tight and tied with string. It didn't look particularly Roman. Or kickable. It looked sad.

"I don't want to kick Caesar," Jesus said. "I don't even know Caesar."

"That's not the POINT." Thomas grabbed the ball and demonstrated with a wild kick that sent it flying into Miriam's garden. A squawk of protest from the chickens confirmed its landing.

"Thomas bar Jacob!" Miriam's voice came sharp over the wall. "That's the third time this week!"

"Sorry!" Thomas called back, not sounding sorry at all. He turned to Jesus with a grin. "See? Perfect kick. Now you get it and try."

Jesus sighed and squeezed through the gap in Miriam's fence. The chickens scattered, except for the big red hen who stood her ground, fixing him with one beady eye.

"I'm not here to steal eggs," he told her.

The hen clucked skeptically.

The ball had rolled under the cucumber vines. As Jesus reached for it, something made him stop. There, by the water trough, the old donkey everyone called Methusaleh stood with his head hanging low. Too low.

"Thomas," Jesus called. "Something's wrong with—"

"Just GET THE BALL! Before she comes out with the broom!"

But Jesus was already walking toward Methusaleh. The donkey's breathing sounded wrong—wet and rattled, like stones in a bucket. His left front leg trembled with each breath.

"Hey," Jesus said softly. "Hey, old man."

Methusaleh's ear twitched but he didn't lift his head. Up close, Jesus could see the problem. The leg was swollen from hoof to knee, hot to the touch even through the fur.

"JESUS!" Thomas's head appeared over the wall. "What are you—oh."

The wet breathing got worse. Methusaleh made a sound that wasn't quite a bray, more like a sigh that had given up halfway through.

"We should get someone," Thomas said. "My father maybe, or—"

But Jesus wasn't listening. That feeling was back—the warm river in his chest, the one that had come when Ruth fell, when the bird couldn't fly. Only this time it felt different. Bigger. Like it had been feeding on all his held-back moments.

He placed both hands on the swollen leg.

"Jesus, don't. If he kicks—"

The warmth rushed down his arms so fast it made him gasp. Not like water this time—like lightning made of honey, bright and sweet and terrifying. The donkey's leg pulsed under his palms, and Jesus felt—

Pain. Days of it. A cut from a sharp stone that went bad. Infection spreading like ink in water. The donkey's simple confusion about why his body had turned against him.

"Stop," Jesus whispered, not sure if he was talking to the infection or the river or himself.

The warmth poured out anyway. He felt the poison drawing back, the swelling deflating like a punctured wineskin, the heat leaving—

"WHAT IN THE NAME OF ABRAHAM'S BEARD—"

Miriam stood in her doorway, broom in hand, mouth hanging open.

Jesus jerked his hands back, but it was too late. Methusaleh lifted his head, shook it like he was waking from a long nap, and took a solid step forward on his perfectly sound leg.

"I—he was—it's not—" Jesus backed away, his hands tingling like he'd been holding nettles.

Thomas had gone completely silent, still hanging over the wall with his eyes wide as plates.

Miriam looked from Jesus to the donkey to her broom, as if wondering which one to hit first. Then Methusaleh complicated things by braying—loud and joyful and decidedly un-dying—and trotting to the water trough with the energy of a donkey half his age.

"You." Miriam pointed the broom at Jesus. "What did you do?"

"Nothing! I just—he looked sad and—"

"That donkey," she said slowly, "has been lame for a week. I was going to have Samuel look at him tomorrow. And you're telling me you did nothing?"

Jesus's mouth opened and closed like one of her chickens. The tingling in his hands was fading, but the memory of the donkey's pain still echoed in his bones.

"Maybe he was just... tired?" Thomas offered weakly from the wall.

Miriam's look could have curdled milk. "Tired. The donkey was tired. And now he's dancing like it's Purim."

As if to prove her point, Methusaleh kicked up his heels and pranced—actually pranced—around the garden.

"I should go," Jesus said, edging toward the fence.

"Oh no you don't." Miriam grabbed his shoulder. Not hard, but firm. "You're going to explain exactly what—"

"MIRIAM!" Her husband's voice boomed from inside. "THE BABY'S INTO THE GRAIN AGAIN!"

She closed her eyes, muttered something that might have been a prayer or might have been words mothers weren't supposed to know, and released Jesus.

"Go," she said. "But boy—"

Jesus was already squeezing through the fence.

"—BE CAREFUL!" she called after him. "GIFTS LIKE THAT DRAW ATTENTION!"

He ran. Thomas ran beside him, the ball forgotten in Miriam's garden. They didn't stop until they reached the old olive tree at the village edge, both panting.

"That," Thomas wheezed, "was the most amazing thing I've ever seen."

"You can't tell anyone."

"Are you JOKING? You just healed a donkey by TOUCHING it! Do you know what this means?"

"Thomas—"

"You could heal EVERYTHING! My grandmother's bad hip! The baker's curved spine! Oh! And Rebecca's baby who won't stop crying—maybe something's wrong with her that you could—"

"THOMAS!" Jesus grabbed his friend's shoulders. "You can't. Tell. Anyone."

Thomas's excitement dimmed slightly. "But... why? You could help everyone. You could—"

"I don't even understand it!" The words came out harsher than Jesus intended. "I touch things and they... change. Or heal. Or I feel what they feel. And I don't know why or how or when it will happen next!"

"But that's incredible! You're like... like Moses! Or Elijah!"

"Moses was eighty when God talked to him. Elijah was old. I'm six. And I just want to play ball without accidentally performing miracles!"

Thomas was quiet for a moment. Then: "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"What?"

"If I could heal donkeys with my hands, I'd never play ball again. I'd heal everything. I'd be the most famous person in all Galilee! Maybe all Judea!"

"I don't want to be famous."

"Then you're stupid." But Thomas said it gently, the way friends can call each other stupid and mean I don't understand you but I still like you.

They sat under the olive tree as the sun started its downward slide. In the distance, they could hear the other boys still playing. Judas's voice rose above the rest, organizing teams, making rules.

"He's going to find out," Thomas said quietly. "Judas. He notices everything."

Jesus picked at the bark. "I know."

"He already doesn't like you."

"I know."

"Because his father compares you two all the time."

"I KNOW, Thomas."

They sat in silence again. Then Thomas punched Jesus's shoulder, not hard.

"Well, I think it's amazing. Even if you are stupid about it."

Jesus almost smiled. "Thanks."

"Want to go back? Get the ball?"

"Miriam will kill us."

"Nah. She's got baby troubles. We could probably steal all her cucumbers and she wouldn't notice."

"We're not stealing cucumbers."

"You're no fun for someone who can do miracles."

They walked back toward the village, arguing about whether healing counted as a miracle or just a "really weird thing" (Thomas's position). Behind them, the olive tree's shadow grew long, reaching toward the village like fingers.

And from another shadow, someone watched. Not the traveler from yesterday—someone smaller, younger. Someone whose father owned the big house with the red door.

Judas stepped out from behind the wall where he'd been listening. His face wore an expression too old for his nine years—part triumph, part fear, part something harder to name.

"Miracles," he whispered to himself. Then louder, practicing: "The carpenter's son performs miracles."

He thought of his father's morning lecture about proper Torah memorization. Of the way the rabbi praised Jesus's questions while frowning at Judas's stuttered responses. Of his mother's sigh when she found him struggling over the simplest prayers.

A donkey. The strange boy had healed a donkey with a touch.

Judas looked at his own hands—soft, uncalloused, good for holding scrolls he couldn't properly read. What would his father say if Judas could heal? Would he finally look at his son with something other than disappointment?

But no. That gift belonged to the carpenter's boy. The one who didn't even want it.

"Stupid," Judas muttered, echoing Thomas. But when he said it, the word had teeth.

He turned toward home, his mind already working. His father had friends. Important friends. Friends who worried about false prophets and wild claims and the delicate balance Rome allowed them to maintain.

They should know about this. They needed to know.

After all, Judas reasoned as he walked, wasn't it his duty to protect the community from deception? From danger? From boys who might upset everything with powers they couldn't control?

He was doing the right thing. He had to be.

But his stomach hurt as he walked, and his hands shook slightly, and somewhere deep in his chest, something small and hurt whispered: Why him? Why not me?

By the time he reached the red door, Judas had buried that whisper so deep even he couldn't hear it anymore.

All that remained was the story he would tell.

And the watching he would do.

And the waiting for his moment to matter.

That night, Methusaleh slept standing for the first time in a week. In his simple donkey dreams, a boy made of sunlight touched him and said, "Better now." And it was.

---

CHAPTER 3

THE BIRD AND THE WHISPER

The dead sparrow lay by the well like a dropped prayer.

Jesus found it during the quiet hour when most of Nazareth napped. He'd come to draw water for Mother, but the tiny body stopped him mid-reach for the rope. Brown feathers ruffled by wind. One wing stretched wide like it was still trying to fly.

He knelt in the dust. The sparrow weighed nothing in his palm—less than nothing, as if death had stolen even its small substance. Its eye, half-open, reflected the noon sky.

The warm river stirred in his chest.

No, he told it. Not here. Not in the open.

But the river didn't care about careful. It rose like flood season, pressing against his ribs, flooding down his arms toward his cupped hands. The sparrow's stillness pulled at him the way Ruth's broken body had, the way Methusaleh's pain had. Death was just another kind of wrong his hands wanted to make right.

"Please," he whispered, not sure if he was asking the river to stop or the bird to live.

The tingling started. His palms grew hot.

Then—footsteps. Multiple sets. Coming fast.

Jesus closed his hands around the sparrow and stood, the river crashing back into his chest so hard it made him dizzy. Benjamin and his brothers rounded the corner, their voices carrying complaints about the heat.

"Jesus!" Benjamin called. "What are you doing here? Everyone's sleeping."

"Water." His voice came out strangled. The sparrow's body was so light between his palms. So wrong. "Getting water."

"Us too. Mother says we drink like camels." Benjamin's younger brother, David, peered at Jesus's closed hands. "What've you got?"

"Nothing."

"Doesn't look like nothing." David stepped closer. "Is it a lizard? I caught a huge one yesterday. Want to see?"

"No, I—"

"Let me see!" David grabbed for Jesus's hands.

Jesus stumbled backward, clutching the sparrow tighter. Too tight. He felt tiny bones shift under his fingers and wanted to cry out.

"Leave him alone," Benjamin said, but he was curious too. "Though seriously, Jesus, what—"

"It's dead!" The words burst out. "It's a dead bird and I found it and I was going to bury it because that's what you do with dead things, you bury them so they can rest, but you came and—"

He was crying. When had he started crying? Fat tears rolling down his dusty cheeks while three boys stared at him like he'd grown a second head.

"It's just a bird," David said slowly. "They die all the time."

"I know that."

"So why are you crying?"

Jesus didn't have words for it. How could he explain that he felt the sparrow's interrupted flight in his bones? That his hands knew exactly how to restart its tiny heart, realign its neck, call back whatever spark had fled? That holding this small death while denying his gift felt like drowning in reverse?

"Because," he said finally. "Because it was flying and then it wasn't."

The brothers exchanged looks. The kind that said the carpenter's son is being weird again.

"Well," Benjamin said awkwardly, "we could help bury it. If you want."

"No." Jesus wiped his face with his shoulder, hands still cupped around the bird. "I'll do it."

They filled their jars in uncomfortable silence. As they left, David whispered something that made his brothers snicker. Jesus didn't catch the words, but he heard the tone. The same tone the village boys used when talking about Crazy Ezra who lived in the caves and claimed angels spoke to him.

When they were gone, Jesus opened his hands.

The sparrow lay twisted now, truly broken. His desperate grip had finished what the fall had started. A fresh wave of tears came—not for the bird's first death, but for this second one. The one he'd caused by trying too hard to hide.

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry."

He found a spot behind the well where the earth was soft. Dug with his hands until he had a hole deep enough. As he placed the sparrow in its tiny grave, the whisper started.

Not the warm river. Something else. A sound just behind his ears, like wind through spaces that didn't exist. Like someone calling from very far away or very deep inside.

Jesus froze, hands full of dirt. The whisper grew—not louder, but clearer. Still no words, just... presence. Recognition. Like being known by something that had always known him.

"Who are you?" he asked the empty air.

The whisper swirled, almost amused. As if to say: You know. You've always known.

"I don't understand any of this." He covered the sparrow with earth, patting it down gently. "The healing. The feeling. Now voices that aren't voices. Why is this happening to me?"

The whisper softened. If it had words, they might have been: Not to. Through. For.

"For what? For who?"

But the presence was already fading, leaving only ordinary afternoon silence and a small mound of fresh earth.

Jesus sat back on his heels. His hands were dirty. His face was streaked with tears and dust. He'd failed to save the sparrow, scared the village boys, and now he was hearing whispers that spoke in riddles.

"I'm not very good at this," he told the tiny grave. "Whatever I'm supposed to be. I'm not good at it."

A shadow fell across him. Jesus looked up to find Ruth standing there, her favorite doll tucked under one arm.

"Mama says come home," she announced. Then, tilting her head: "Why you talking to dirt?"

"I buried a bird."

"Oh." She plopped down beside him, arranging her doll's hair. "Was it the brown one?"

"How did you—"

"Saw it when I came earlier. Tried to make it fly but it wouldn't." She gave him a matter-of-fact look. "Things die, Shesus. Mama says it's 'cause the world is broken."

"But what if you could fix them? The dead things?"

Ruth considered this seriously. "Then they'd just die again later. Maybe sadder."

"Sadder?"

"'Cause they'd know what dying felt like twice."

Jesus stared at his little sister. Sometimes she said things that seemed to come from somewhere else, somewhere older than her three years.

"Ruth? Do you ever hear... whispers? When you're alone?"

"You mean the light people?"

His breath caught. "What?"

"The light people. They talk but not with mouths." She demonstrated by opening and closing her mouth silently. "Like that. But you hear them anyway."

"You hear them too?"

"Sometimes. Mostly in dreams." She went back to playing with her doll's hair. "They say you're not ready. But I think that's silly. You're six WHOLE years old."

"Ready for what?"

She shrugged. "Dunno. They talk in puzzles. Like that story about the king who had to guess the name." She stood, dusting off her bottom. "Come on. Mama made bread and if we don't hurry James will eat it all."

Jesus followed her, mind spinning. Ruth heard whispers too. Called them light people. Said they thought he wasn't ready.

Ready for what?

As they walked, Ruth slipped her small hand into his. "Don't be sad about the bird," she said. "Last night I dreamed it was flying again. But different. Brighter."

"That's just a dream, Ruth."

She gave him a look that was pure Mary—patient and knowing and slightly exasperated. "Shesus. Sometimes dreams are more real than real."

They walked home hand in hand, leaving the sparrow in its grave. But that night, Jesus dreamed too. Of a bird made of light, flying through spaces between stars. It turned to him with eyes like tiny suns and said in a voice like wind chimes:

Not yet. But soon. Be patient with becoming.

When he woke, the whisper was there. Stronger. Waiting.

And somewhere in the darkness, Ruth sat up on her mat, eyes wide.

"The light people say the bird says thank you," she announced to the sleeping house. Then she lay back down and was snoring within seconds.

Jesus stared at the ceiling until dawn, wondering if everyone heard voices they couldn't explain, or if madness ran in families, or if—just maybe—something larger than understanding was trying to speak to those small enough to hear.

The whisper hummed agreement.

Or maybe that was just the wind.

But wind doesn't know your name the way this whisper did.

<3EKO

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Thanks for reading and sharing.

If you’d like to support my work, you can always buy me a coffee.

And if you’d like a PDF of the full Book One manuscript, just say so in the comments or reply directly to this email, and I’ll be sure to send it to you.

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Chapters 4-5 drop tomorrow along with Amazon pre-order link.