The right place:
This home happens to be at a perfect altitude and has just the right amount of moisture to give flowers an ideal environment. Those who tend flowers and labor earnestly to produce a few blooms can only look on in amazement at what can happen naturally.
Above Riosito:
The home used to have children and many visitors. They now live in the town or in Santo Domingo. An occasional visitor comes to stay for the coffee harvest. Many environments exist for raising of children. This one appears blessed with stunning vistas, quiet nights, cool breezes and a responsive soil for crops. Yet the lure of city life draws people away. In the process, young Dominicans exchange a hoe or a pick for a life of sitting on a motorcycle, waiting for the occasional passenger. Which environment tends to produce responsive, alert young people?
First Century Nazareth:
God has his pick of any environment in any century. He can not be lured by what seems attractive to people in one age or another. There is no way to influence the choice that God makes for his son, except through the prayers of humble people who longed for the Messiah.
So God chooses Nazareth over every conceivable human environment. Why did he do that? What did he see in the tiny country place that we miss?
Nazareth, where the flowers of prophesy grow naturally:
Could it be that Nazareth offered the Son of God an environment where he could learn naturally the correct way of imaging God his father? Might Nazareth have been free from the kinds of distractions which might block or diffuse the insights of Mary and Joseph as they communicate with their son? Not every environment can produce wild flowers in profusion. It takes a special set of conditions; a convergence of blessings. Will humanity find the path that leads to cultivating the Nazareths of our modern world? Will we sense when a place and a time are particularly blessed for the bringing forth of wise children?
