Hello friends,
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in docks,
Welcoming you to Day 13 of our Advent 2025 series,
Waiting with Matthew.
And today,
As we come and we settle and still ourselves,
Ready to hear what it is that the Spirit would whisper to us today,
I invite you to still your head,
Your body and your heart.
Breathe deeply in and out,
Just allowing your whole being to relax into God.
As we reflect today on Matthew 2,
Verse 23,
Where Matthew writes,
He made his home in a town called Nazareth,
So that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled.
Hiddenness is one of the quiet threads that runs through Scripture.
It seems to be one of God's preferred places to work,
And yet it's one of the hardest places for us to wait.
We all know that we like clarity,
We like momentum,
We like signs that something is happening,
But hiddenness?
Hiddenness feels like suspension,
Like nothing's going on,
Like we've been put on the shelf and forgotten.
And yet today's verse invites us to see hiddenness not as absence,
But as preparation.
Matthew tells us he made his home in a town called Nazareth.
After the drama of Bethlehem,
The terror of Herod,
The escape of Egypt,
The waiting for danger to pass,
Matthew suddenly shifts the whole story into the quiet,
Nondescript world of Nazareth.
Now Nazareth is not impressive.
Nazareth is not significant.
Nazareth is not the kind of place where you expect God's promises to take root.
It's so unremarkable that in John's gospel,
Nathaniel famously asks,
Can anything good come out of Nazareth?
And that is exactly Jesus' home.
Not Jerusalem with its temple,
Not Bethlehem with its connection to the royal lineage,
Not Egypt with its symbolic echoes of Israel's past,
But Nazareth.
A place that no one was paying attention to.
A place that no prophecies highlighted,
A place entirely ordinary.
Matthew chooses a single sentence to describe nearly 30 years of Jesus' life.
He made his home in Nazareth.
Almost three decades of quiet living behind the scenes,
Hidden from public view,
Forming the humanity that would eventually reveal God.
Hiddenness is not nothingness.
Hiddenness is holy ground.
And here in the Advent season,
We're invited to enter this hiddenness with Jesus.
Advent is a season of promise,
But not fulfillment.
It's a season of signs,
But not visibility.
It's a season of gestation.
The work that happens out of sight while all looks still and quiet on the surface.
Nazareth is the place where God's long preparation unfolds.
It's where Jesus learns the rhythms of human life,
Where he watches the seasons turn,
Where he sits in the synagogue as a young boy,
Where he helps Joseph in the workshop,
Where he grows slowly,
Silently,
Steadily,
In wisdom and in stature,
And in favor with God and people.
And it's here that we discover something we often forget.
God prepares the greatest works in hidden places.
And Advent invites us into this mystery.
The incarnation itself begins unseen,
Conceived in Mary's womb,
Carried in quiet,
Sheltered from public view until the right time.
And now the word becomes flesh in Nazareth,
Long before he's proclaimed in Galilee.
Nazareth reminds us that divine work often moves underground,
Like roots deepening beneath the soil,
Invisible but essential.
The text doesn't rush,
It doesn't dramatize.
It simply says he made his home there.
As though to say the ordinary matters.
Ordinary life matters.
The season of quiet matters.
This chapter the world overlooks is the foundation for everything that comes next.
Hiddenness isn't delay.
Hiddenness is formation.
And formation takes time.
Many of us resist hiddenness because we assume that if no one sees us,
Nothing significant is happening.
But in Nazareth,
The exact opposite is true.
God is shaping the Messiah in silence.
God is building depth.
God is weaving love into muscle and memory and breath.
We feel hidden when our prayers go unanswered,
When our gifts seem unused,
When our hope has no proof to support it,
When we're doing faithful work that no one applauds,
When we're in a job or season or relationship that feels too small for the promise that's inside of us.
But Nazareth teaches us this.
You are never more seen by God than when you feel unseen by the rest of the world.
In hiddenness,
God is not withholding.
God is preparing.
So what does Advent ask of us today?
It asks us to stay with the quiet,
To trust the slow work of God,
To believe that unseen grace is still grace,
To recognize that waiting in hiddenness is not waiting alone.
Christ himself waited in the same way.
And there's a peculiar comfort in knowing that the Savior of the world lived most of his life in obscurity,
Not yet teaching,
Not yet healing,
Not yet gathering disciples,
Not yet dying,
Not yet rising,
Just living,
Attending,
Listening,
Receiving,
Growing.
And if Jesus embraced hiddenness,
We can too.
Advent is the season that trains our inner gaze to see holiness in what seems uneventful.
It retrains our hearts to notice that God is present long before God is obvious.
And perhaps today you're living in your own Nazareth season,
A place that feels small,
A season that feels quiet,
A chapter that feels unfinished.
But hear the scripture again.
He made his home in a town called Nazareth,
So that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled.
Nazareth was necessary for fulfillment.
And your hidden season,
It may be too.
It's the chamber where God shapes the soul,
Strong enough to carry the promise.
Advent is not about rushing towards Christmas.
It's about staying awake to the slow and quiet and hidden work of grace that prepares us for the revelation to come.
So let Nazareth speak to you today.
Let it teach you the sacredness of obscurity.
Let it invite you to dwell faithfully in the hidden places,
Knowing that God is forming something in you that will one day bless others.
Hear me today,
My friend.
You're not stuck.
You're being shaped.
You're not forgotten.
You're being held.
You are not unseen.
You are being prepared.
And Christ,
Who sanctified Nazareth by living there,
Walks beside you in your hiddenness also.
And so as we hold that which the Spirit has whispered to us and stirred inside us today,
I wonder if you'll join me in this prayer.
Hidden God,
You dwell in the quiet places.
You work in the unseen.
You whisper in the slow unfolding of our days.
Teach us the holiness of hiddenness.
Give us the grace to trust that you're shaping us even when nothing seems to be happening.
Make our Nazareth seasons fruitful.
Places of quiet formation.
Places where your love settles deep inside us.
Places where we grow in wisdom and tenderness without even realizing it.
Keep us faithful in the small things.
Keep us patient with your timing.
And keep us attentive to the ways you prepare us in silence for the life you are calling forth.
Amen.
And so my friend,
As you rise from this time together to go into the rest of your day,
May you find peace in the hidden places where God is shaping you.
May you trust the quiet seasons that prepare you for what comes next.
And may you discover that even in obscurity,
Grace is overflowing towards you.
And may that overflowing grace be joined by peace and love and hope and go with you every step of the way today and always.
Amen.
Until tomorrow,
My friend,
May God's grace and peace be with you.
