For those 30 years He lived in a podunk town called Nazareth as a carpenter with His family.
The most interesting thing that happened to Him?
When He was a young boy, He went missing in Jerusalem and was found talking to some teachers in the temple. They were astonished by His understanding and His answers.
Other than that, for the first 30 years of Jesus' life, He made no headlines.
Now remember what we said on Lent day one. Jesus is God. So when we say that Jesus made no headlines, it means that with that one exception, for 30 years, God made no headlines. He did nothing extraordinary (or if He did, nobody saw it, or knew it when they saw it). He worked no wonders. He made chairs and other such upholstery with His completely human hands until his 30th year at a wedding feast in Cana when they ran out of wine.
Think about the will power that it would take any of us to live our lives for 30 years knowing that we created everything around us and can manipulate it with a thought, that we can show those around us the beauty and the love and the power of God like we were tying our shoes, and yet do nothing, except go on about our lives like there was nothing that made us different.
That's the difference between God and us. We desire novelty. We want to see (and do) extraordinary things. And there is, in a way, nothing wrong with that. It's good to want to leave a big, Christ-shaped imprint on the world. But so much of that is accomplished just by going about the simple tasks that we are supposed to do every day. The kinds of tasks we sometimes consider to be mundane and unexciting.
God is not threatened by repetition and routine. In fact, He created it. How many sunrises has He orchestrated? Why isn't He tired of them yet? How many times did Jesus just wake up in the morning, pray, and go to work, and have supper with his mother, and pray again, and go to sleep? And He never got tired or bored of it. No doubt he interacted with people on a daily basis, and loved them perfectly, but in a small and quiet way that didn't attract attention from out-of-towners. He didn't need to. Quietly loving was enough for Him, until the time came.
Because He saw the wonder and awe of God everywhere, and in everyone. It was all around Him. It is all around us. At he root of being able to live the way Jesus lived is being able to see Creation -- the world, and most of all other people -- the way Christ saw and sees them. And us. Christ always saw the holy, even in the most routine of moments.
Next time you do the dishes, try it.
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