Epiphany

This picture is completely unrelated to the following epiphany...other than the fact that these are the cute little people who make mommy need epiphanies. 

So I heard something at church yesterday--a tiny side-note to the sermon that totally rocked my bad attitude about stay-at-home-mom-hood.  

Now, if you are not a believer you can keep reading, I promise.  Even if you don't consider yourself a participant in the Gospel, you probably recognize that Jesus had an impressive career during his relatively short time on earth.  Facts and conjectures aside, he made a massive impact in history, and in the lives of thousands of people (during his time, and billions more over the centuries following).  

Ok, so what?  So before he did all that, he worked as a carpenter for 30 years.  This is another fact that everyone can recite.  It is often a glossed over element to the grand story of God through space and time.  

But just sit on that for a minute.  God, the creator of the universe who propels all living things through life and death for all time, became man, and then built shelves for 30 years.  He got up everyday, had a cup of coffee or something, put on his dirty work clothes and swung a hammer for 8 hours.  He lived in total anonymity for three decades--he didn't do any of the ministry that he is known for.  If he had an impact on anyone's life during that time it isn't documented as far as I know.  Maybe he gave a waiter a nice tip, or babysat twins, but nothing anyone decided was Godly.  

This is all massively mysterious to me, and there are so many ideas that could be discussed about this period of Jesus' life, but for me the simple idea that God willingly set aside his illustrious career of Alpha-and-Omega-ness to just live through so many years of trudgery is astounding.  And this life of trudgery was intentional, approved, even sanctified by God.  For some reason it was a critical part of God's master plan.  He loved his Son and found all that he did perfect--even this meaningless carpentry gig.  

SO.  Compared to this, I have absolutely no right to complain about putting aside my insignificant and unimpactful career in design in order to raise children for about 6 years until they are in school.  AND I have no right to say that raising children is mundane trudgery compared to being a single dude who makes benches (or whatever).  How much more important is raising children than working with wood!?  Even on a bad day I get that my kids are more meaningful than lumber.  

And then let's just think about the eventual impacts of this child-rearing hiatus in which I am living.  Everything about my mothering lifestyle now shapes my kids little souls.  When they are out on the playground without me someday, their actions will reflect what happened during this period of time we spent 24/7 together.  I doubt that Jesus' carpentry hiatus ever yielded much after his Alpha and Omega career was resumed.  I mean, what do shelves and benches have to say about their creator?  I suppose they could still be sturdy after a couple decades, but who cares in light of human-kind's redemption by grace through the death and resurrection of Christ!?  (Ok, I said non-believing friends could still read this post, not that it wouldn't be biased…)

Oh, and by the way, for the three of you that might 'follow' my blog, my broken wrist situation is much better (already) and I think I will do a humbling blog post about that soon….in case you were wondering….