Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Time: 7:03 PM
Song: Jesus, the Missing Years
Artist: John Prine
Mode of Consumption: Listening to “Liked” Songs playlist on Spotify
Link to song: https://open.spotify.com/track/4PwQcBKk7q9yDPWiqrJQj4?si=d8d864c438a843d6
There are eighteen missing years in the life of Jesus. Well, that’s what John Prine heard at a party, so he wrote a song about it.
It’s funny check it out.
I don’t know if it’s true. My sense is that there are theologians out there than can point to this text or that text that illuminate the years between 12 and 30 for Jesus. Perhaps there are a few more texts buried in the secret library at the Vatican that tell exactly what he was doing. Maybe the teens years aren’t flattering, or possibly just not that noteworthy.
I don’t know. I’m not a theologian.
The interesting part is that these years weren’t included in any of the books of the Bible. All those words written by numerous writers over a few hundred-year period, and they all agreed on one thing – those years are unknown, not interesting, not pertinent.
As a hack writer, I can tell you that a big part of the process is deciding what to keep and what to take out. It’s not always easy. Sometimes the words are just so nice in this one section, I mean, they really click together to say something. Just not something important to the story being told.
So, I take it out.
Sometimes I keep those words in the back of my mind, thinking those words in that order will fit somewhere else in some other story.
Maybe that’s the deal with Jesus and his missing years.
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