Did you have a favorite place to hide as a kid, like a fort in the woods, or a closet, or under the kitchen table with a blanket over the top?
It seems like we all start out loving the game of hiding and being found, all the way back to peekaboo. Hide and seek is one of those simple joys we tend to lose in our busy, oh-so-important adulthood, a small but important pleasure we forget much to our loss.
Recently, I’d had a tough day. So I go outside to breathe some fresh air and pull some weeds. The evening light is spilling through the picket fence, laying golden planks on the cropped grass. The birches bow in the breeze, leaves glimmering. Lilac leaves brush my arms and head.
There is a grassy space between the lilacs and the neighbor’s shed. It’s just the size for a kid to hide. The evening is quiet. I am crouched near that spot, yanking on a weed, when it hits me.
God is in the bushes.
He has been hiding here, waiting for me to find him. He is in the light, the stillness, the green of spring. Buried in my angst, I have stumbled across him again, and we are both delighted.
You are my hiding place, you always fill my heart with songs of deliverance; whenever I am afraid, I will trust in you… the old chorus comes to my lips. Sometimes God is a hiding place, as in refuge-from-disaster hiding place. Other times, he is a hiding place just for fun.
Letting delight and wonder be a part of our everyday experience is not just an interesting exercise. It is a strategy for sanity. In a world full of busyness, deadlines, and duties, we can too easily lose sight of our humanity.
We were made in the image of God, and he invented play.
Have you played peekaboo with a toddler lately, or made a silly face for her? Have you walked barefoot in the grass, or sat down to watch the sunset light the clouds?
Where has God been hiding lately, waiting for you to find him?