is Jesus?”, Joshua asked, panic-stricken.
“Joshua, sadly Joseph departed for Sepphoris very early today with his sons.” Miriam was obviously uncomfortable about having to inform Joshua of this. “They have to complete a project there. Jesus did not know that he was supposed to join them. He wanted to say goodbye to you, but it was still very early when they left, and he did not want to waken your family. After all you will need all of your energy for the arduous journey.”
These words of Miriam were like a stab in his heart. He understood them in his head, but they tore his heart apart inside him.
“Jesus did not say goodbye to me. Jesus did not say goodbye to me. Jesus…“ he kept on mumbling to himself. From this day on he withdrew and did not speak a single word all the way to Ephesus.
Sarah still was not able to control her sorrow yet, although the family of five had been travelling for over an hour now on their way toward Megiddo. She was still shedding tears due to the pain she felt. This time it had nothing to do with Samuel humiliating her. No, this time it was about the farewell from Miriam. She knew that she would never see Nazareth again, but that did not matter. No, she would not miss Nazareth, but she surely would miss Miriam. Her friendship to Miriam had become very important to her. And she shed more tears for Joshua. He had finally found a true friend, and not just any kind of friend, but rather a wonderful soul, Jesus, and now fate had torn them apart already. Joshua sat in front of her on the donkey, but since their departure Joshua seemed a changed boy. She could only guess how he was feeling inside. She petted his head and could tell that this attention did him some good. Her daughters were doing fine. Esther and Judith both sat on the third donkey behind them and were very happy. They were looking forward to the big city. Samuel walked ahead and led his family and the animals safely to toward their destination. “Sarah, please stop crying.” Samuel seemed worried. He had never experienced his wife this way. “The departure isn’t easy for me either. But God the lord, may he be praised forever, often has prepared pathways for us that are not easy. Indeed, often they are stony and bare.”
“I know. Will we make it to Megiddo today?”
“Yes, that we will, certainly. We have already made good progress so far. However we will have to leave very early tomorrow morning, for the road from Megiddo to the harbour of Caesarea is a couple miles longer than our trip today. After all we don’t want to keep our host Jimra waiting till deep into the night. He had been told that we will be arriving tomorrow evening.”
“How long will we be staying in Caesarea?”, Esther asked her father.
“We will be boarding the vessel the day after the Sabbath in the morning. So we will be spending three days in this harbour town. So we will be able to get a little used to how life is in a city, before we finally arrive in Ephesus in about a weeks time.”
“How big is Caesarea?” Esther was visibly looking forward to city life.
“Around 35.000 people live in that city. Which makes it nearly twice the size of Sepphoris. And Ephesus is about ten times the size of Sepphoris.”
Samuel had chosen the route via the Via Maris for himself and his family. However he cursed the fates for sending them to Caesarea instead of to Ptolemais. For there was a harbour there that was much closer and that would have been much easier to reach. However since no ships from Ptolemais to Ephesus were available, they had been forced to take the longer road to Caesarea. And thus the Via Maris, which was a very important trade route which nearly passed through and led via Megiddo and Caesarea all the way to Egypt, was a logical choice. Samuel used to always curse the trade route, since through it’s proximity a lot or riff-raff with no business in Nazareth tended to stray there. But today for the first time ever was actually pretty happy about the good condition of this trade road. After all, the Romans had built inns about every ten miles on this route, which had originally been used by exclusively by the Roman legions, yet now primarily served non-military travellers.
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