When I was a kid, I was both terrible and fantastic at the game hide-and-go-seek. I was tiny enough to fit in the most compact of spaces, patient enough to wait, but the same thing would always happen; just before I was about to win the game, I would run from my hiding place…. because I had to go to the bathroom.
Inevitably, as soon as I would be crouched in my hiding place, I would have the uncontrollable urge we’re all familiar with. So. I. Always. Lost. My older, more able-bladder-ed brothers and cousins would always win for I would expose myself as I made way to the loo, and yet, I loved it. I can still remember my favorite hiding places at my grandmother’s house – in the linen closet, tucked behind the record player, behind the dresser in my grandfather’s room. Not too long ago I even played a game of hide-and-go-seek as a brainstorming brain break at work, and you would have thought we all instantly became 20 years younger. It’s still one of my favorite days at work, ever. I slid beneath a supply shelf until my shoes were discovered. The last person found had such dedication, he climbed into the ceiling.
What makes hide and go seek so thrilling? Is it finding the best spot and holding your breath as the seeker passes by, searching frantically for the best spot because you don’t know what number they’ve counted to yet, or is it the excitement of the minutes ticking by as the hope is rising that maybe your hiding spot was just good enough to win. What it is that we love about this game so much? I don’t think it’s the hiding, and I don’t necessarily think it’s the seeking. Honestly, I hate being the seeker. There’s always that slight sting of embarrassment when you realize you walked past the winner’s hiding spot several times over, or the shock of finding someone and their reaction is to scare you.
No, I don’t think it’s the hiding, I don’t think it’s the seeking, but rather, I think that its the being found that makes hide-and-go-seek so much fun.
Every time you’re caught there’s a moment of “Aw man!” and a gleeful ruefulness. A “darn it,” with a smile. We love to be found, even if it means we lose the game.
It’s so easy for me to look at this story of Adam and Eve and scoff and point out all the silliness in it, to glean my lesson about good and evil. But recently I’ve been absolutely struck by a new lesson that God has been showing me: We still hide.
I think like Adam and Eve, we’ve discovered we are naked, and we hide. We hide from God, our Creator, Maker, Father. We hide behind things so he won’t discover who we really are. We have seen our nakedness and we hate it, so we hide.
I think we’ve gotten so comfortable hiding that we have forgotten the joy of being found.
We still adopt the nature of our ancestors. We hide from our Creator when we’re exposed to our nakedness. We look down at the things that we deem “ugly” and we seek to cover them up and hide them from God.
I have hidden so much from God. I have hidden from Him when I feel like I am not presentable enough to stand before him. When I am covered in shame like blemishes I put on a mask before Him in order to hide my imperfections from His perfection. You and I have been led to believe we have to be blameless before Him, that we can’t cross through the curtain of Glory unless we go through the steps of sacrifice. We pray prayers and sing songs like we’re performing for him, trying to give him our very best, so that he won’t notice our shameful blemishes. We are afraid to show him the ugliest parts of ourselves, to be naked and bare.
But the beautiful reality of Jesus is that HE was the lamb without blemish before God, HE tore the veil so that we didn’t have to be perfect. He’s already seen us laid bare, sin and shame exposed. He knows what’s under that cover up.
Verse 12 is familiar, but Verse 13 caught me off guard in a way that made me lose my breath.
I think back to Adam and Eve, walking with God in their nakedness, in their purest form – unashamed of who they were created to be. It makes me jealous. To think about how beautiful it must have been to not be so concerned with appearance. To not feel like I am not measuring up to the person I want so desperately to be. To be so open…
One night, in the midst of one of the toughest things we’ve been through in our marriage, I got mad. I’m not just talking about a little angry, I’m talking full-on furious. It started as anger directed at my husband about the dishes not being done, which escalated into something so ugly, so vile, that it left me in a heap on the floor, red-faced and tear-stained, and throat aching.
He just sat down across the kitchen floor so that our eyes were on the same level, looked at me in my ugliest state, and asked a question that penetrated to the deepest parts of my aching. He saw past the blemishes and saw straight to the heart of my anger. He allowed me the space to mourn and come to terms with something that I was hiding behind, covering myself from everyone, God included. James had found me in my hiding with one simple question and he was gentle.
My husband’s question reminded me of God’s response to Adam and Eve when he finds them hiding.
“Who told you that you were naked?”
To me, that question is so… tender.
“Who told you that you had to hide from me?”
“Who told you that you wouldn’t be accepted?”
“Who told you that you had to be perfect in my sight?”
Jesus is asking us the same thing.
So here’s the journey that we’re going to take together, the journey of re-finding joy in being discovered. We’re going to discover what we are hiding from God, and lay it bare before our King, vulnerable and raw. We’re going to learn about the things that we’ve been hiding behind, using them as false shields from the loving blaze of Glory that is our Father.
Because here is the promise of scripture about the things that we hide:
And perhaps, conversely, here is the other side of that truth:
Follow along with me in this game of being found, and maybe expose ourselves from our hiding places.