Most of us have played the game before.  Pretty basic idea.  One person counts while the rest hide and when the counter gets to 10…well, “ready or not!”  When my daughter first started playing this game she would hide in the same place over & over again.  She would run into her dad’s closet and slam the door behind her, giggling the whole time.

After a few rounds of her hiding in the exact same spot my oldest became frustrated.  “This really isn’t very fun mom, I know exactly where she is!” he said. So, I encouraged her to try a new hiding spot. But, she thought she had stumbled upon something pretty great and she wasn’t about to give it up to try and find a new spot.  And so, my oldest continued the game of pretending he didn’t know where she was hiding.

Recently, I was struggling with some things that had me playing my own grown-up version of the game with God.  I had my favorite “hiding spot” and I was camping out, hoping he wouldn’t find me.  Of course that’s as silly as my daughter believing that her brother didn’t know where she was hiding. But, I was letting myself believe that He couldn’t see all the ugly that I was trying so hard to hide.  Truth be told, I thought I had found the perfect hiding spot. And God was probably thinking the same thing as my oldest son. “This really isn’t very fun, I know exactly where you are!”

Have you ever come to a point where you realize the “ugly & messy” that you need to deal with is gonna take some time and some serious effort on your part?  I could feel the depth of it and I knew it was something that had been growing over the years.  Something that wasn’t gonna just be plucked out of my life with a simple prayer.  It was something that was going to need some uprooting, some tilling & some cultivating. And that’s always hard….it’s usually messy…and it’s definitely not fun.  And so I was kind of stuck in “hide out” mode, hoping I could just ignore it and go on with things.  But, the faithful seeker that He is, he kept looking.  And in that gentle & quiet way that He loves to speak, he dropped some questions into my heart. “Why are you hiding this from me?” “Is it really any easier trying to hide it than it would be to trust me with it, to talk to me about it, and to let me help you with it?”

He wasn’t walking around trying to figure out where I was.

He was trying to figure out why I was trying to hide something that He could see.

I think we do this a lot in our lives. We have things that we’re ashamed of or we feel guilty about. Areas where we’re still in the learning process & haven’t quite mastered yet.  And it seems many times our first instinct is to head straight to the closet, slam the door and hide out.  But, “ready or not, here He comes”…to remind us that He’s great at “messy”.  To remind us that he’s got a great track record of taking the “painfully difficult” and making it bearable.  To teach us that to wrestle with it is part of the process.  And maybe, even to tell us that in the midst of our ugliness, He sees something beautiful in us. So, if you’re working through something that’s kinda messy or kinda ugly, know that He already sees it & He loves you regardless.  Don’t bother with the hide & seek games, He’s standing right beside you.

Acts 17:24 “Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him.  He doesn’t play hide-and-seek with us. He’s not remote; he’s near.  We live and move in him, can’t get away from him!”