I feel sorry for the poor kid who happened to be there the day Jesus decided to use him as an "object lesson." No child likes being used in this way. Some of us can remember being stood up before a group of adults and having our parents ask us to recite something we'd just learned in school. Or being made to sit down at the piano and play some stupid little piece for our family's friends. We wanted to shrink into the woodwork and become invisible. How humiliating! Frederick Buechner describes the boy in these words: "Jesus...puts his hands on his shoulders so he won't make a run for it. The child stands wide-eyed, more than a little scared, much more than a little embarrassed, toeing the dust. If it weren't for the honor of the thing, he'd as soon have been left unnoticed. He wishes he'd had time to get the hair out of his eyes and button up his shirt, at least to spit out his bubblegum." (Frederick Buechner, "Whistling in the Dark," San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988, p. 27)