So, there I was, hiding quietly in a dark cupboard. My heart pounding and listening intently for the sound of any approaching feet. I could hear noises and screams from other rooms, but so far, I had not been discovered. No, nothing sinister, just my wife and I playing hide-and-seek with our two granddaughters, aged 5 and 8.
The two little girls, like many small children, love playing hide-and-seek. The little one can’t count properly to 30 yet, so when it’s her turn, she must count to 10, three times. Anyway, I obviously had a good hiding spot, because I had not been discovered yet, but I could hear that the little one had found my wife and her sister.
Hence the screams of joy and surprise. I am sure most of us have played the game at some time in our lives, with variations, but the same basic concept. Hiding in the dark cupboard I at first did not want to be found, but then later I wanted my little granddaughter to find me and love seeing the surprise and joy on her face when she does. This got me thinking about God and us.
We sometimes ‘hide’ from God and hope he doesn’t find us, but then are actually glad when he does. Or, alternatively, we are the one seeking God. You will notice that I put hiding from God in parentheses, because we can’t really hide from God. What an absurd idea. Yet so many of us keep trying it over and over again. This is one of the reasons that I love Psalm 139. “Where can I go [hide] from your Spirit? Where can I flee [and hide] from Your presence?” (v7 – added words mine). David is not really asking a question, he is making a statement, but if you want an answer, it is, ‘Nowhere’. This is also one of the themes in the story of Jonah.
He tries to run away from the Lord (Jonah 1:3). Read the whole story and see how that works out for him, it is even a bit comical. You will notice that when we try to run away from God it is just downhill from there. Jonah went ‘down’ to Joppa (v3). On the ship Jonah went [down] below deck (v5). He then goes down into the sea and even further down into the belly of a great fish.
This makes me smile when I think about playing hide-and-seek with my granddaughters, because if the older one is the one whom must ‘seek’, then she will often tell me not to hide in the shower or in the pantry because those spots are too obvious and easy to find me there. I can see God, with a bit of a grin on his face, when we try to hide from him. “Really, is that the best spot you could find ?”. I think of when Elijah ran away and ‘hid’ from God. He was terrified at the threats from Queen Jezebel and ran away (1Kings 19: 1-3). However, if we think about it, who was he really running away from? My favourite part of that entire story is when he is hiding deep inside a dark cave (much like that dark cupboard I was hiding in) and God simply strolls up to him and asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” (1 Kings 19:9).
Hey God, how did you find me so easily? Did you count to 30 and say, “Coming ready or not?” Did you close your eyes properly when I ran off to hide? You get the point. But here is the real crux of the matter, for me anyway. That as much as we run and hide from God, deep, deep down we want him to come and look for us and find us. In the exact same way as me standing in that dark cupboard and eventually looking forward to seeing the big smile on my granddaughter’s face and her shrieks of excitement when she finds me.
A question we can ask ourselves is “Why am I hiding in the first place?”. Sometimes it is because we’ve done something wrong. Like Adam and Eve after they ate of the forbidden fruit and ‘hid’ from God when they heard him walking in the garden (Gen. 3:8). Yet there are many times when we just feel we are not good enough. We are too bad, even for God. The good news is no, never for God. His grace is bigger than the biggest sin, and God Himself, the Son, came to seek and save the lost (Rom. 5:20; Luke 19:10).
My advice is stop running, because it is exhausting. And there are no good hiding spots anyway. Let us rather draw near to the Throne of Grace (Heb. 4:16). The cupboard door bursts open, bright light shines in disturbing my eyes and there are my two granddaughters with shrieks of laughter. “Found you”.