Who’s hiding from whom?
May 29, 2009 (Friday)
Jesus told several stories that illustrate God’s love for us. The way he put it, we are lost and God looks for us until he finds us. He told about a lost coin, a lost sheep, and a lost son (Luke 15). Jesus made it clear that we are the lost and God is the one who is seeking us.
When we are in trouble and life seems to be falling in on us, we tend to think of our situation the other way around. We think God is lost and we can’t find him. We can see an illustration of this in Job’s experience. That’s the way he felt when he said, “If only I knew where to find him! (Job 23:3). He thought God was hiding from him. When we are suffering, we tend to feel that way.
When we were kids, we played “hide and seek.” If you were “It” then you closed your eyes and counted to 100 while all the other kids found a place to hide. Then you looked for them until you found them, one by one. Well, God is “it” today — not you. You may think you are looking for God, but the truth may be that you are hiding from him.
Think about Adam in the Garden of Eden. God came every evening and the two of them had a nice walk together with pleasant conversation. Then Adam sinned. He immediately knew something had changed within himself and between him and God. When God came for the pleasant walk that evening, Adam hid from him. How very sad. “Adam,” God plaintively called. But Adam was hiding from God. No doubt Adam really wanted to come out of hiding and have sweet fellowship with God, but now his sin came between them. God didn’t change; Adam did. The New Testament makes it clear that you and I were in Adam that day, and that same guilt has been felt in our hearts. Our sins separate us from God, so we hide from him.
The next time you feel like God is hiding from you, ask yourself, “Who’s hiding from whom?” and “Who’s seeking whom?”
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“The Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.” (Luke 19:10).