Joel, a Boy of Galilee

In ancient Galilee, a crippled boy named Joel watches the other children play from the shadows of his father's olive grove. He cannot run or work alongside the men in the fields, and he believes himself to be a burden upon everyone. When Rabbi Phineas takes notice of the lonely child, he gives Joel a small task that makes him feel useful for the first time in his life, and tells him that his kindness comes from following the teachings of a remarkable young man from Nazareth. Soon, whispers spread through the villages about healings and wonders performed by this same man. Could he be the Messiah? When others tell Joel he should go and ask to be made whole, he must find the courage to believe that such a thing might be possible for someone like him. What follows is a story of faith, hope, and the radical idea that the overlooked and forgotten are exactly who God chooses to notice first. This gentle juvenile fiction, first published in 1905, imagines the miracles of the New Testament through the eyes of a child who has every reason to doubt but chooses to believe anyway.