Hide and Seek

One of the first, and most fun, games we learn as children is Hide and Seek. It's such a simple game that even a one year old can “play.” Can you remember the joy on the face of your little one when you first hid your face behind your hands, only to “pop out” from behind them and shout “Here I am!”? Can you still remember the squeals and cackles from your toddlers as they stood behind a sheer curtain “hiding” from you while you “seek” them? As we grow older the game grows a little more complex and intense as we learn the real fun comes from being good at hiding and diligent in seeking. The better you can hide the more fun the game becomes for everyone involved. The stakes are higher, the seeking more complicated, and therefore the payoff is greater.

But somewhere along the way we outgrow Hide and Seek. It’s not because it isn’t still fun (if you can ever convince a group of grown ups to play you will see what I mean), it’s more because we get distracted. There are too many things right in front of our faces that need to be taken care of and dealt with for us to busy ourselves with “seeking” just for the fun of it. In fact, somewhere along the line we stop enjoying the seeking. We not only stop enjoying the seeking, we start to hate it. Don’t you hate it when you can’t find your car keys? Do you enjoy seeking the missing remote to the tv? Is anything more frustrating than searching for a parking spot at Wal Mart? Heaven forbid we don’t know the location of our phones at all times. When did seeking stop being fun?

Maybe it was about the time when no one wanted to play Hide and Seek with us anymore. You probably can’t remember the day, but there came a day when the game that you played a thousand times, you played for the last time. No one wanted to play Hide and Seek anymore. It had been replaced with Angry Birds or angry bosses or texting boys and Tweeting political stances. Your siblings weren’t interested and your parents were too busy and you gradually learned to stop seeking because no one was hiding. But deep in your heart is buried the memories of the joy of seeking..

There's still great joy in seeking, because with it comes the reward of finding. We hate looking for our car keys or cell phones or tv remotes, but think about how excited you get when you find them. You may hate circling the mall parking lot five times trying to find a place to park in the crowded holiday masses, but you shout for joy when you stumble upon the “first parking place." Does it get any better than that? Actually it can.

What if we learned to love the seeking as well as the finding? What if we viewed them as two sides of the same valuable coin. Do you have that moment of euphoria when you wake up and see the phone charging on your nightstand? Of course not. It's right where you know it is and expect it to be. However, when you misplace it and then discover it you are ecstatic. You don’t have the joy that comes with finding apart from the seeking.

For nearly 20 years I have carried with me a list of several vinyl records that I want. Whenever I come across a record shop or even a Goodwill or yard sale with a bin of vinyl records, you will find me diving head first into the collection and meticulously combing through every single one looking for one of the records that's on my list. Here's the interesting part: I have every one of them on Spotify and most of them I own in digital formats. At this very moment I could go on Amazon or other online stores and buy each record on my list, but I refuse to do so. Why? Because I love seeking them out. In the 20 years I have been doing this I have come across exactly two that were on my list and I was ecstatic when I did. It was like Christmas morning and my honeymoon and the first day of college football season and an all you can eat buffet all rolled into one. All because of a forty year old $2.00 record in a yard sale box. I don’t suppose that I’ll ever find all of the records on my list, but that’s not the goal anyway. The fun is in the seeking and that amplifies the joy of the finding.

Seeking and finding is at the heart of the three parables in Luke 15. In the parable of the lost sons the older brother stands outside the celebration wanting to know why he’s never had a party thrown for him and his friends, to which the father explains, you are always here and everything I have you already own, but your brother was lost and now he is found, so we celebrate. The same with the previous story of the shepherd looking for his lost sheep and the woman seeking a hidden coin. All three stories end with a celebration because of the seeking and finding. These stories also remind us that what God gets, He loves to give. He is a God Who enjoys seeking us because He loves the joy of finding us ("The son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost", Luke 19:10), so He shares that with us, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you." Learn to love the seeking and you will be overjoyed with the finding.

Here is the good news: if no one else wants to play Hide and Seek with you, God does. The Bible continually shows us that God wants us to seek Him. “Seek the LORD and His strength; Seek His face continually” (1 Chronicles 16:11). “Now devote your heart and soul to seeking the LORD your God” (1 Chronicles 22:19). “If you seek Him, He will let you find Him” (1 Chronicles 28:9). “The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God” (Psalm 14:2). “He is a rewarder of those who seek Him” (Hebrews 11:6).

You may be asking, “Why doesn’t God just show Himself? Why doesn’t He reveal His will for me plainly? Why is it so hard to see Him when times are hard?” I think the answer lies in Hide and Seek. When we learn to love the seeking it produces overwhelming faith, love and joy when we find Him. The reason a child enjoys the seeking is because they know that mom or dad hasn’t gone away completely, they are just hiding, but they are near. They are near and they are aware and they want to be found because you can squeal and laugh and hug together when you find them.

When you are in your darkest moments, don’t mournfully cry, “God where are you?” Get up and seek Him. Search for Him, hunt Him, look for Him everywhere in your life. He is there, “I will never leave you or forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). He has not gone away completely and He is not far away, “they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us” (Acts 17:27). He is there, He is near, and when you seek Him you will find Him. “I love them that love me; and those that seek me early shall find me” (Proverbs 8:17). And when you find Him you will rejoice together and be overwhelmed by His presence. Until then distract yourself from your trials with the excitement of seeking. Don’t focus on the darkness, focus on seeking His light. But don’t just limit seeking God to hard times, seek Him everyday.

When I wake up in the mornings I open my eyes and talk to God. I thank Him for the years when He was seeking me and I celebrate the fact that He found me. Then I get myself excited for the day by saying to God, “I know you are out there and I am going to find you. I’m going to listen for you in every conversation. I’m going to look for you in every coincidence. I’m going to seek you in every person. I’m going to hunt for you under every experience. If I'm having trouble finding You I will go to your Word because I know you are there. I am going to seek you and I am so excited to see where all I am going to find you next.” I know this may sound childish to some, but I disagree. There is a difference between being childish and child like. Being child like is the point. “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3). Ready or not, here I come.