Hide and Seek (Friday Devotional)

“Am I a God near by, says the Lord, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them? says the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord.”

- Jeremiah 23:23-24

I struggled to keep my breathing quiet and my body still. I tightly squeezed my eyes shut, fearing the whites could give me away. Above all, I listened carefully, paying close attention to every footfall, every whisper. They were close, I was certain of it. My time was almost up.

But then, miraculously, the voices started to fade, until all I could hear was the hum of the air conditioner. They hadn’t found me, I was safe! I allowed myself a sigh of relief even as I stayed alert, knowing my pursuers could be back at any moment. This was serious business—this was hide-and-go-seek. I couldn’t let myself relax for a single second.

But, as those seconds became minutes, my initial adrenaline started to morph into something else—boredom? Annoyance? Fear? Where were they? I had done my part, I had hidden—now it was my cousins’ job to find me! As proud as I had been of myself a few minutes ago, when I had remained undiscovered even with them so close, now I was getting nervous. Had they forgotten about me?

After a few more minutes, I looked at my watch and saw that thirty minutes had passed since our game of hide-and-go-seek had begun, and my cousins didn’t seem any closer to finding me than at the beginning of the game. So, unfurling my stiff body from the corner of the closet where I’d spent the last half hour, I made my way to the kitchen only to find everyone sitting at the table enjoying a snack.

Indignantly, I demanded an explanation from my cousins. “Where were you? I’ve been waiting forever!”

My oldest cousin smiled and answered. “Oh, we found you at the very beginning…that closet’s the first place we looked. We just thought we’d see how it long it would take for you to come looking for us.”

When we try to hide from God, we make the same mistakes I did as a child playing hide-and-go-seek: we underestimate how much we want to be found…and how bad we are at hiding. As fallen beings, it is in our nature to want to flee from the will of God when it seems too difficult or demanding. But when you step away from the presence of the Lord, just as natural is the subsequent feeling of regret, the realization that you want to be found far more than you want to be lost.

What we lose sight of, from the moment we run from His will to the moment we return in repentance, is that there is no hiding from God—that even when we leave Him, He never leaves us. Even when we want to be hidden, He has not lost sight of us.

There are times, especially after you have stumbled, when it seems like your attempts to hide from God have actually succeeded. In those moments, it can feel like you have found a place so secret, so dark, that God is not there. Nothing could be more terrifying. When those times come, take comfort in knowing that, like the Prodigal Son, you can always return home. No matter how far you fall or how well you hide, God never loses track of you—sometimes He’s just waiting for you to leave your hiding place and come looking for Him.