Not without honor except

In Matthew 9 we read that Jesus "came to His own city. And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed.

Later on, He said "A prophet is not without honor except in his hometown and in his own household."

Part of that is familiarity, of course. "We have known Josh from when he was a toddler, so we know all there is to know about Josh. He's one of us, not someone greater than us." Lewis wrote about that in The Four Loves already, and I won't try to better him.

There might be another aspect too. In the first passage, He came to his own city. He knew the people there--it wasn't a big city (maybe 500, maybe as many as 2000). He would have already known the paralytic. Why didn't He do anything about him before?

"It wasn't time yet" isn't going to be a very satisfying explanation.

Why didn't God send a Moses earlier? Moses was eager to help; why did he, and the slaves, have to wait another 40 years?

"If you're for real, why didn't you help sooner?"

I can imagine that getting in the way of believing--especially if the one you cared about died before Help came.