DEC 3 | Jesus Spent 90% of His Life in Obscurity: Finding God in Your Ordinary Routine
The Scandal of the Hidden Years
Here's a number that might unsettle you: ninety percent.
Jesus Christ lived approximately thirty-three years on earth. He actively preached and ministered for only three of them. Which means the Son of God—the Word made flesh, through whom all things were created—spent ninety percent of His earthly existence doing what exactly?
Sweeping sawdust off a workshop floor. Carrying water from the well. Eating the same breakfast His mother prepared day after day. Ordinary, invisible, repetitive work that no gospel writer thought significant enough to document.
We rush past this reality because we're hungry for the miracles, the sermons, the dramatic moments. But what if those thirty hidden years weren't just a prelude to the "real" ministry? What if they were the ministry too?
What if we've been wrong about where God shows up?
A Verse Rescued from the Coffee Mug
There's a single verse in the New Testament that's been domesticated into workplace motivation. You've probably seen Colossians 3:23 printed on office posters and inspirational mugs. But when you understand what the Apostle Paul actually meant, it changes everything.
"Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters."
The context matters enormously here. Paul wasn't writing to pastors or professional ministers. The verses immediately following make the audience clear—he's addressing slaves. People whose entire existence consisted of tasks nobody noticed or appreciated. Scrubbing floors. Fetching water. Cleaning the same mess they cleaned yesterday, knowing they'd clean it again tomorrow.
And Paul's response to their situation isn't what we might expect. He doesn't say "hang in there until circumstances improve." He doesn't promise that faithful service will lead to freedom or recognition.
Instead, Paul makes a radical claim: this is where spiritual life happens. Right here. In the repetition. In the invisibility.
That Greek word translated "whatever"—ho ean—is aggressively inclusive. It doesn't mean "whatever important thing you do." It encompasses everything. The mundane. The repetitive. The tasks that feel like filler between the moments that "actually matter."
Paul is eliminating the category of secular work entirely.
Laundry as Liturgy: Three Marks of Sacred Practice
This might sound like an overstatement, but consider it carefully: laundry may be the most theological chore in your house.
The word "liturgy" comes from the Greek leitourgia, meaning public service or repeated action with sacred meaning. The early church understood something we've largely forgotten—you don't simply believe your way into spiritual transformation. You practice your way there. You perform the same sacred motions week after week until they reshape your soul from the inside out.
Laundry carries all three marks of genuine liturgy.
Death and Resurrection in the Spin Cycle
Every load of laundry enacts a miniature Easter.
Consider the pattern. You take what's soiled—stained with coffee, sweated through from labor, carrying the evidence of life lived hard—and you submerge it completely. It disappears into water. And it emerges transformed. Clean. Restored. Ready to serve its purpose again.
The early church understood this connection intuitively. They baptized new believers in their everyday clothes because they recognized the pattern: death and rising isn't reserved for souls alone. It's woven into the fabric of creation itself. You see it in the seasons' turning. You see it in the rhythm of sleep and waking. And yes, you see it in your washing machine.
The Hebrew concept of ritual purity—tahor—illuminates this further. Being tahor wasn't primarily about moral worthiness. It was about being prepared for encounter with the divine. Priests washed before entering the temple not because God found dirt offensive, but because the washing itself created readiness. The ritual made space for presence.
What if every load of laundry is preparation? What if you're making room for the sacred to inhabit your ordinary house, your ordinary week, your ordinary Tuesday afternoon?
The Holiness of Hidden Service
Here's an uncomfortable confession: I hate that most of what I do goes unnoticed. I want credit. I want recognition. I want some cosmic scoreboard reflecting my effort and sacrifice.
Laundry offers none of that. There's no promotion for perfectly matched socks. Your family won't gather to applaud your towel-folding technique. The work disappears almost immediately—worn, dirtied, returned to the hamper in an endless cycle.
But listen to what Jesus said in Matthew's gospel: "Your Father who sees in secret will reward you."
In secret.
Jesus assumes that some of your most significant spiritual work will be invisible. Not broadcast on social media. Not celebrated in community. Not even acknowledged with a simple thank-you. And He doesn't frame this as a problem requiring solution. He identifies it as the precise location where the Father pays closest attention.
This runs directly counter to everything our culture teaches about significance. We're told that impact requires platform. That meaning requires visibility. That if no one sees it, it doesn't really count.
The gospel tells a different story entirely.
Incarnation and the Dignity of the Material
This is the theological center, the truth that changes everything else.
The Christian claim is genuinely scandalous. We believe that God—infinite, eternal, beyond all human comprehension—chose to enter this. Not merely "humanity" as an abstract concept, but actual embodied existence. Hunger. Fatigue. Muscle soreness. The sensation of fabric against skin.
Jesus wore clothes that someone had to wash.
Sit with that for a moment. For thirty years, Mary did her son's laundry. The hands that would later be pierced by Roman nails first learned to fold a tunic. The Word through whom galaxies were spoken into existence helped hang garments to dry in the Nazareth sun.
If God considered ordinary physical labor beneath His dignity, He had a strange way of demonstrating it.
The Incarnation didn't merely sanctify "spiritual" activities. It sanctified material reality itself. Bodies became holy. Bread and wine became vehicles of grace. Water became the medium of rebirth. And yes—fabric, soap, the rhythm of washing and drying and folding—all of it drawn into the sacred story.
After God wore human skin, there is no secular. Not anymore. Not for those with eyes to see.
Brother Lawrence and the Practice of Presence
In seventeenth-century France, a poorly educated man named Nicholas Herman entered a Carmelite monastery. He had no theological training, no social status, no particular gifts that would mark him for leadership. The community assigned him to the kitchen, where he spent the majority of his remaining years washing dishes and preparing meals.
By all external measures, his life was utterly unremarkable.
Yet this man—who took the religious name Brother Lawrence—wrote observations about spiritual life that remain in print more than three hundred and fifty years later. His slim volume, The Practice of the Presence of God, has guided countless souls toward deeper communion with Christ.
His central insight emerged directly from the kitchen sink:
"The time of business does not differ from the time of prayer. In the noise and clatter of my kitchen, I possess God as tranquilly as if I were upon my knees."
Brother Lawrence discovered what most of us spend our entire lives seeking. And he found it elbow-deep in greasy dishwater.
The secret wasn't the task. The secret was presence. Attention. The choice to recognize every moment as potential encounter with the living God.
A Practice for Your Next Load
Theory without practice changes nothing. So here's a concrete invitation for your next encounter with the laundry basket.
As you load the washing machine, name what needs cleansing in your own heart and life. Not with shame or self-condemnation—simply with honesty. Let the water carry it symbolically. Release what doesn't belong.
As the machine runs its cycle, practice the discipline of waiting. We're terrible at waiting. We fill every gap with scrolling, with productivity, with noise. Instead, let the forty-five minutes become prayer time. Not necessarily structured prayer—just presence. Just availability. Just being with God without agenda.
As you fold each item, pray for whoever will wear it. Let your hands bless your people. That t-shirt your child will pull on tomorrow morning? Touch it with intention. That worn shirt your spouse reaches for every weekend? Hold it like it matters.
Because it does. Because they do. Because this is where the sacred hides.
The Liturgy Continues
There's a phrase tucked into Luke's gospel, describing Mary's response to the extraordinary events surrounding Jesus's birth. Angels had appeared. Shepherds had arrived with wild stories. Ancient prophets had spoken destiny over her infant son.
Luke tells us she "treasured these things, pondering them in her heart."
That word "pondering" translates the Greek symballousa—to throw together, to turn over in the mind, to hold something up to the light and examine it from every angle.
Mary took ordinary moments and searched them for meaning. She looked for God in the daily texture of her life.
And she found Him.
You will too. Not in the spectacular. In the spin cycle. Not in the extraordinary. In the ordinary made sacred by attention and intention.
The laundry will never be finished. The basket will fill again before the day ends. The cycle will continue as long as your household draws breath.
Thank God for that.
Because it means the liturgy continues. The practice deepens. The presence grows.
And somewhere between the sorting and the folding, you might just discover that heaven has been hiding in your laundry room all along.
An Invitation to go Deeper….
If today’s message spoke to you, join the FaithLabz 30-Day Prayer Challenge and strengthen your connection with God’s unshakable love. You are never alone—let’s grow together!
