In the first few chapters of Luke’s gospel, we are given a glimpse of the beauty of hidden life. We see Zechariah and Elizabeth’s quiet devotion to God through years of infertility and political oppression, Mary’s young, small life visited by the angel Gabriel, the private joyful meeting of Mary and Elizabeth, the hidden movement of John in the womb, the inconspicuous birth of Jesus in a manger because there was no room in the inn, the dark hidden night life of shepherds in a field, the long, lonely lives of Simeon and Anna praying into old age. Luke’s birth narrative ends by telling us about the long years Jesus spent living a hidden life in Nazareth, growing older, gaining wisdom, and increasing in favor with both God and human beings. These hidden lives have great and profound meaning for the whole world and show us that our quiet daily lives are where we really and truly meet God.
In a culture that values fame, fortune, obvious productivity, and achievement, it can be hard for us to understand how valuable our hidden lives are. I remember when I was a young mother and attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. I was invited to be the student representative on a search committee. The committee had its first meeting mid-summer in July. Before the meeting began, all the professors were discussing what they had done during the early summer months. One had presented at a prestigious academic gathering in Scotland. Another had traced Paul’s footsteps through Turkey and Greece. Another had been in California giving a series of lectures. I stayed quiet but, in my mind, I was thinking of what I might say,
Well, I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, found a lost shoe, bandaged a scraped knee, and then watched my children riding their bicycles in circles on our street.
I was certain my activities would fail to impress and unfortunately I felt small and insignificant as I sat in that room.
Now that my children have grown up and left home, now that I am a professor myself and have presented at conferences, I know that those years of sandwich making and nurturing life in my home were precious, sweet, and beautiful. They formed deep channels of love in my interior life and in the lives of my children. They were more deeply formative of my relationship with God than all the reading, studying, and writing I could ever do. The treasures of quiet daily life are rich and abundant, but often that abundance is difficult to see when we are in the midst of living through it.
Daily quiet faithful living can be arduous, boring, and repetitive. We can sometimes feel like we are energetically spinning our wheels but getting nowhere. Our inclination might be to look outside of the daily grind for distraction, adventure, or something new, but there are profound depths of meaning lying below the surface of our daily lives. God will meet us there if we keep looking.
