Hide and Seek
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| Found online***** |
But then I would finish counting, turn around and take two steps and say, "Where are you?" and two more steps and say, "Where are you?" and she would jump up giggling and yell, "Here I am!"
She didn't want to stay hidden. She wanted to be found. She wanted her daddy to come and pick her up and hug her and laugh and spin her around and love her. She wanted to be found.**
But as kids get older we teach them to hide better - to stay hidden. We play a whole different kind of hide and seek. We hide our emotions, our fears, our dreams, our frustrations. Too many times we as parents don't want to go seeking for THAT, so we don't play hide and seek anymore. And then when we finally do go looking - when we know there's a problem - they've learned to hide too well, they don't want to be found, they won't jump up and say, "Here I am!"
I thank God that there's still a little girl enough in Rachel and Elie that they don't hide like that - but I know it, I've done it and can still do it sometimes, God forgive me - and sometimes I see it in people all around me too. We are too good at hiding - from each other, and, we think, from God.
There are a handful of people who can seek me - who can say, "Where are you?" And, okay, I'll be honest, sometimes they have to ask a couple times, but I WILL stand up and say, "Here I am..." And they don't turn on me, and they don't destroy me when I've failed and when I show them the dark places I've tried to hide in or the hurts that I've been covering up or the fears or the losses or the dreams. People I can be absolutely transparent with because they love me.
In Luke 19 Jesus goes into the house of tax collector - talk about somebody who hides - he tried to hide in a tree! But talk about somebody who doesn't want anybody to look too closely at them, not too deeply under the surface, don't scrutinize the books too carefully, the lifestyle, the business practices. But Jesus looks right at him - "I found you!" and Jesus celebrates. And the tax collector can't help but respond in the joy that Jesus felt in the finding. His life is changed.
Jesus says that he has come to seek and save what is lost.
What is hidden.
What is in the dark corners and secret places that we don't want anyone to know about. Because we've become too good at hiding.
We may try - but we can't hide from God. We're like my daughter - hiding under a chair or behind a curtain thinking that we've found a place that we can just sit in the dark, away from God and everyone else - well hidden, unfindable, impenetrable fortresses. But the truth is, we may be hidden away from everyone else, but we are never away from God.
In Psalm 139 David observes that there is nowhere we can go that God isn't already there - the heavens, the depths, where sun rises to where it sets, darkness, even before we were born - but not just physically - "search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." Some people are haunted by the fact that they "can't escape God's scrutiny." That there's nowhere that God isn't.*** But those are words of comfort - or they should be.
I wanted to start with Rachel playing hide and seek because every time she jumped up and said, "Here I am!" I laughed and picked her up and spun her around, so happy that I found what I lost. Sound familiar? Luke 15 stories? A lost sheep, a lost coin - a lost son? A father who watched and watched for any sign of the lost son - a father who runs to his boy when the son finally says, "Here I am," and grabs him and throws a party.
That's the God of Psalm 139 - everywhere watching, waiting, longing for sons and daughters to stop trying to hide, to stand up and say, "Here I am!" Embracing. Throwing a party.****
* Elie, when she was about 2, was playing hide and seek with her grandfather, and hid in the bathtub, not a bad place to hide, but instead of pulling the shower curtain to hide herself she picked up two round drain stoppers and just held them over her eyes - you know, if I can't see you, you can't see me, right? Classic :)
**She was not any good at FINDING us when we hid, either - and she got more and more anxious the longer she couldn't find us - because we should WANT TO BE FOUND! And, of course, I would always give myself away so she could find me - and she would laugh and run to me and - you guessed it - I'd pick her up and spin her around and laugh with her.
*** Yeah, go ahead and try to diagram that sentence...or fragment...or...um...whatever it is...
****And if you think I'm wrong about that - well I might be - but you also might want to think about this - I know I need to be reminded of that ALL the time - because God's goodness, holiness and grace is deeper and wider and fuller than I can ever really comprehend...
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