Hiding in Plain Site

Right now I have a 4 year old son and a 2 year old daughter.

My daughter is in the stage where she loves to play hide and seek games. Often we will pull the covers over ourselves in bed, or a blanket one the couch and hide from her brother or mother.

It’s silly and fun and everyone plays along.

We live and work at a camp, and so I have the luxury of coming home to the house each day for lunch. Often when arrive my daughter and wife are already eating at the kitchen table. In typical two year old fashion, my daughter always wants to fool me. So she hides. I should clarify, she “hides” by placing her hand over her eyes.

Like a good dad I pretend this works as I creep around the house calling out for her saying things like “ I thought she was right hear? where could that girl be?”

She thinks it’s hilarious. She giggles through her hands until she can’t take it any more and screams “ I’m here, I hiding!”

I enjoy the phrasing that Eugene Peterson uses in his translation of Jesus and Judas during the events leading up to Judas betrayal.

As Jesus sit around the table with His disciples, He reveals that one of his friends will betray him. They all are shocked. and then the author notes that Judas makes a point of saying “it’s not me is it?” Jesus replies, “Don’t play games with me Judas”.

Hours later in the Garden, Judas arrives with his band of soldiers to betray Jesus. According to the plan he has worked out, he singles out Jesus by kissing Him on the cheek. Again Jesus says “ why the charade”. He makes it clear, He is well aware of what is happening.

Often I think I am like Judas and my daughter in this respect. I hide myself in plain site. Not because of where or what I am hiding, but because of who I’m hiding from.

Sometimes God calls out like he did to to Adam in the garden saying: “where are you?”, even though he clearly knows what has happened. However sometimes he leans over and says “Why the charade?”

There have been many secrets I have kept in life, some small and some big. I have been successful at times in hiding them from those around me and foolishly thought that I had also fooled God. After all, if He actually knew, what would he think of me?

I have to remember that He knows even the secrets I’ve forgotten, yet He still calls me his own.

This gives me the courage to be real with those around me. They may not have the same reaction to my hot mess of a self, but I know at the end of the day there is one who knows me better than I know myself and He calls me His own.

What have you tried to hide from the one who knows, and loves anyways?