Hide and Seek, by Scot Bower

Published: January 25th, 2007

The Bible says that if we seek, we will find (Matthew 7:6-8).  A version of the Bible called “The Message” makes it even more plain: “This isn't a cat-and-mouse, hide-and-seek game we're in.”  So why do I sometimes find it so hard to find God?

Evan is the loveliest, cutest boy-child in the world.  He’s also got a brilliant mind (ok so I’m biased).  However, he’s not so hot at Hide and Seek.  Mimi our daughter is better at it, although not great.  I came home the other day after my wife, Misty, had been playing hide and seek with the 2 of them.  She told me with a smile how she ‘hid’ behind a curtain with feet poking out and watched Evan and Mimi run from room to room (we only have 3) tearing about looking for her under the sofa and in the same cupboard again and again.  After ten minutes or so, Misty started whistling and calling out to them, but they still couldn’t figure out where she was.  They only heard this disembodied voice calling out to them, “Hello, yep I’m over here!”.  Eventually, mummy came out and there were big laughs all round!
 
The 24-7 Mission Team to Belgrade wrote at the beginning of their summer mission in 2006 that they were having trouble ‘finding’ God in Belgrade.  They likened their experience to a game of hide and seek. Yet they did find God, just maybe not in the places they originally expected to find Him.

Sometimes I can be so busy trying to “find” God or “seek” His will that I give myself no chance of really catching Him.  My seeking is just like Evan’s: with my head down, I run to the obvious places. I look and look but I can’t see him.  I run from room to room or thing to thing and look in the same old place over and over again.  Unsurprisingly, I don’t find Him.

We have been in Skopje for 5 months now and I’m getting some new tactics for my hide and seek game. I’m learning to see God more in the faces of people I meet, in the generosity of those who don’t have much, in lives that have been truly transformed and in the beauty of Gods creation.  Dejan became a Christian last year and whenever I see him, he makes me smile.  Rarely do I get through a conversation without him laughing out loud.  He told me his story the other day about battling with heroin addiction and joining the army in the hope of kicking the habit.  He once overdosed and woke up in a hospital bed with his parents and a commanding officer staring down at him.  I swear he was laughing as he told me about it!  I was wide eyed with mouth open, not knowing whether I should cry at the sad story or laugh at the joke with him.  I hear God in Dejan’s laugh.  The joy of his salvation is my joy too.  

I’m learning to see God in creation as well.  Humanity has a tendency to clothe itself in concrete and steel.  Our urban sprawl is spreading by the day.  It does man good to get out amongst nature and look at Gods creation rather than our own jumbled mess.  Recently, we visited the hugely impressive Roman ruins at Phillipi, complete with amphitheatre, university, library and pillars aplenty.  Yet we read that the original believers in this important roman city forsook the grandeur of their surroundings and instead met together by a river. We may want to meet together in nightclubs or coffee bars, but every now and again when the sun is shining it would do us good to meet instead by a river.

And having ‘sought’ God, it becomes our turn to hide. The Belgrade team signed off their last report with this:

“Waking up early this morning and beginning the day with a prayer walk around the Kalemegdan gave us a fresh sense of God being new to us each day and with that the urge to 'hide' in the places of Belgrade where God needs to work...”

That’s the challenge, not to hide like Adam and Eve hid with all their nakedness issues, but to play with God like Lucy and Susan in The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe.  We can choose to hide in those places we would least expect God to find us: Boystown in Mexico, downtown Skopje, Macedonia or the West End of Ibiza’s San Antonio. We can be safe in the knowledge that God will indeed find us, because He is already there waiting for us to join him. 

Title and thumb images by Carlamercury. 

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