In the novel Gilead, the aging minister, John Ames professes how as the years have passed he has more and more come to see the creation as a wonder--an awe inducing realm of which he is a part. As he has grown older, he has come to love his own body more and more, confessing it to be fearfully and wonderfully made by God.
Such earthiness has always been a hallmark of Christian orthodoxy. To believe in "God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth" necessarily requires we hold the creation in reverence and respect, delight and awe.
One of the unexpected consequences of this is that many Christians remain "hidden" in society because they are busy about their Father's house. They are faithfully and passionately carrying out the duties of their calling, which makes them virtually invisible to others. The Final Advent will reveal this faithful service in all its glory. It will no doubt be surprising to many.
Luther repeatedly insisted upon the hiddenness of true holiness in this life. It is hidden precisely because its expression is so mundane and ordinary.
Only the Lord knows those who are his; and according to the Scriptures it happens very often that God's friends and chosen ones are hidden in vocations that are ordinary and little noticed by human eyes. The Bethlehem shepherds went back to their flocks, though they had been the first of all to see the Savior; and, according to Luther, the Virgin Mary doubtless did her housework as usual after the annunciation, without letting her neighbors know anything about it. "See how purely she bears all things in God, that she claims no works, no honor, and no fame. She acts as she did before, when she had none of this. She does not ask for more honor than before. She does not plume herself, nor vaunt herself, nor proclaim that she has become the Mother of God. She demands no glory, but goes on workin in the house as before. She milks the cows, cooks, washes the dishes, cleans, performing the work of a housemaid or housewife in lowly and despised tasks. . . . She is esteemed among other women and her neighbors no more highly than before, nor did she desire to be. She remained a poor townswoman, among the lowly crowd."
Luther liked to think that the most commonplace matters in the world of men often contain just such invisible and hidden secrets, where man least expects it. God abides in the deep, and he makes his noblest jewels of "nothing," of that which is poor and rejected. [Gustaf Wingren, Luther on Vocation (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2004 [1957]), p.183.]
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