Anonymous: Jesus' hidden years...and yours

by Alicia Britt Chole

What the plenty of summer hides, the nakedness of winter reveals: infrastructure. Fullness often distracts from foundations. But in the stillness of winter, the trees’ true strength is unveiled. Stripped of decoration, the tree trunks become prominent.

Like a flower whose budding glory is covered up by wet leaves, we sense the weight of hiddenness in our hearts and whisper, “I have so much more to give and be.”

Through chattering teeth, arctic scientists inform us that only one-eighth to one-tenth of an iceberg is visible. As much as 90 percent is submerged in the unseen. Because of their enormous mass, with that proportion, icebergs are virtually indestructible. 10% visible + 90% unseen = an indestructible life The most influential life in all of history reflected the iceberg equation. Ninety percent of his life on earth was spent in obscurity. Ten percent of his earthly life was spent in the public eye. And all of his life was, and still is, absolutely indestructible.

But it is important for us to remember that this starting point marked by the Gospel writers is not chapter 1 of Jesus’ life; it is chapter 30. We know practically nothing about Jesus’ first 29 hidden chapters of life. Only three years, less than 10 percent, of Jesus’ days are visible through the writings of the Bible. Over 90 percent of his earthly life is submerged in the unseen.

However, when we state our desire to “be like Jesus,” we are not referring to Jesus’ anonymous years. “I want to walk like Jesus walked and live like Jesus lived!” is generally not equated in our hearts with, “I want to live 90 percent of my life in absolute obscurity!”

We certainly would not have permitted the Son of God to live in anonymity for 90 percent of his life! Every breath would have been monitored by the brightest minds in medical research. Every movement would have been captured by the media and analyzed by psychologists. Every word would have been weighed by theologians, recorded by historians, and printed on tastefully designed posters. Hidden? No way! Our tendency is to only hide things that are shameful or incomplete or insignificant. So when we see the gaps in Jesus’ story we are apt

However, with his life (and with ours), it is critical that we not mistake unseen for unimportant.

Though occasionally mistaken for one, I am not an optimist. I am a diplomatic realist, and it is easy to confuse the two. As a realist, I so appreciate that Jesus’ chosen strategy to resist temptation in the layer of appetite was not denial. At best, denial seems a questionable use of our finite emotional resources. At worst, it is an intentional investment in untruth. Always, it is a poor defense against the lure of immediate gratification. In the Judean wilderness, we do not find Jesus pacing about with determination chanting, “I am not hungry. I am not hungry. I am not hungry.” He was hungry and made no effort to deny the existence of that hunger. When tempted by Satan to use his power to satisfy his own needs, Jesus’ response was not, “What do you mean? I have no needs,” but, “There is something I need even more than bread: my life is sustained by God’s Word.”

Imagine the questions that Jesus might have had during his hidden years about the goodness of God and his timing. How must it have felt—knowing he had the power to heal—to have to walk past children suffering with leprosy? What would have run through his mind when—though he knew he was God’s chosen Savior—he had to listen in silence as others doubted that the Messiah would ever come? What would it have been like—knowing that his conception was miraculous—to be unable to defend his mother when others whispered about her past? How hard would it have been—with unsurpassed wisdom growing in his soul—to sit passively while others taught what they did not live? And how agonizing would it be—when his Word could one day raise the dead to life again—to stand by while those he loved (perhaps even Joseph, his father) died? “Why not now?!” is a cry that brings to the forefront what we actually believe about God. His timing, especially during hidden years, can offend our sense of justice: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the LORD. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8–9) When our ways are not God’s ways—though it may be unspeakably uncomfortable—we must wrestle with the discrepancy between what we think God should do and what he actually does and allow that struggle to edit our tidy, but tame, image of God.

Surely no one experienced this disruption more drastically than Jesus. He came from heaven to earth, voluntarily stripped of his glory. Yet he does not seem to question the value of his undecorated self. During his hidden years, Jesus clearly came to terms with what made him significant. Actually, that what was a Who: the God whose love does not ebb and flow on the evervacillating waves of human perceptions. What grows in anonymous seasons? An unshakable identity.

As mentioned previously, the word desert in the Scriptures is not necessarily a reference to oceans of dry sand but to any empty or abandoned place or thing. As Jesus stepped out of the Judean wilderness and into the public eye, he did not avoid such lonely spaces. On the contrary, he pursued them for the rest of his days. The same word that is translated desert in the temptation appears throughout Jesus’ visible years as solitary or lonely places.

Jesus’ true strength was not revealed in his ability to teach and lead the multitudes. It was manifested in his willingness to make himself nothing, to suffer, and to die. I had enough strength to exhaust myself studying, mentoring, and teaching, but I did not possess sufficient strength to be nothing.

Many of us avoid lonely spaces because, by definition, deserts are barren. Nothing seems to grow there. But perhaps that is the point. Growth is so very distracting. Deserts are bare, but they are also beautiful. They are empty, but there is healing in their stillness. In those beautifully barren, empty, still spaces, our faith is uncluttered as we rest in God alone.

But perhaps the greatest danger of busyness is how it offers itself as a substitute in our lives for intimacy with others and especially with God. Intimacy is emotionally invasive; it requires knowing and being known. But the vulnerability and the selfdenial that intimacy necessitates can often feel too costly. So we substitute doing for knowing and giving for being known. “We show our love in other ways,” we reason. But intimacy has no other way. Without time, without attention, without listening, without touch, we can call it what we like, but it is not intimacy.