Hide and Seek

My youngest grandchild is getting into playing peek-a-boo. She finds it great fun when I hide my face behind my hands and then pop them open and say “boo”. We have many delightful moments together as we find variations in hide and seek type games. I remember playing similar things with my own children as young ones. Gradually they learned to cover their own faces to play the game themselves.

The interesting thing with my wee ones was that, when their faces were covered by their hands, they believed that I couldn’t see them at all. As long as they couldn’t see me, surely, I couldn’t see them.

It was funny playing hide and seek with them at a young age. They would hide their faces from me, but often body parts were protruding from their hiding spot and easily visible. In their minds, they were well hidden, because they couldn’t see me.

It is humorous when I think of how all little children have the same behaviours in that regard. They truly believe they are invisible if they cannot see the other person.

As adults, we can exhibit some similar behaviours. Often, we believe that we can hide our sins from God. We valiantly try to keep these wrongdoings secret, somehow believing that sweeping them under the rug will get rid of them.

In the Old Testament book of Jeremiah, he reminds us of the following:

“Am I only a God nearby, declares the Lord, and not a God far away? Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 23:23-24 NIV)

This passage makes it very clear that God is everywhere – filling the heavens and the earth. How can we possibly think we can let anything slip by Him? Yet we do, again and again.

I am sure most of us can relate to a childhood mishap, where something is broken by us and we try to hide it. Rather than face up to what we have done, we hide the evidence and hope it will all blow over.

I never felt good in these kinds of circumstance. Have you? Eventually the guilt eats away at our well-being. Inevitably coming clean with the truth is freeing.

If I really think about, I am grateful that I can’t hide anything from God. He knows all my ins and outs. He gets me. No one else understands me the way He does. He knows all my faults and foibles and loves me anyways.

And it just doesn’t pay to harbour sin in my heart. What a huge relief it is to confess my sins to my Lord and know that I am forgiven by the precious blood of Jesus. I can cast away those big stones of sin and the relief from all that weight gone is immense.

God sees it all – big sins, little sins. They are no different in His eyes. Whatever they are, we can bring them to the Cross. All is forgiven when we are truly repentant.

While playing hide and seek is a fun game, doing the same with God is not. Trust Him with all parts of your life – the good and the bad. He loves you. He wants to be there for you and give you hope for your future.

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