Do you remember playing hide and seek as a child? Sure, we
all played it! You remember how it worked! If you were “it,” you hid your eyes
and counted slowly to ten, then you searched out your friends who had vanished
into thin air. If you weren’t “it,” you were as creative as possible in finding
good hiding places. Not in the closet – everybody hid there! Maybe you hid under
a bed, or behind a sofa, or even in the cellar (if you were brave enough to go
down there). The very best players found the very best hiding places, so that
they didn’t have to run home until they heard, “Allie allie outs in free!” Yes,
hide and seek is a great childhood game. But it’s not so great when it’s not a
game. When we are really hiding from someone else, trying with all our might
not to be found, it’s a very serious business. Anyone in the witness protection
program will tell you that. Those folks are so serious about hiding that they
get a whole new identity for their own safety. That kind of hiding isn’t any
fun at all.
You might be surprised to find out that the Bible is full of
this kind of serious hide and seek. The first time was way back in the Garden
of Eden, when our first parents ate the fruit that God had specifically told
them not to eat. When they realized what they had done, they ran away from God
and hid themselves among the trees in the garden. Of course, it didn’t do much
good. God found them right away. Nobody called “Allie allie outs in free” on
that day! That was the beginning of a long tradition of trying to run away instead
of facing the consequences. Gideon did it; and so did Jonah. And Jacob, whose
story you just heard. He’s a great example of someone who tries to run away and
hide instead of facing up to what he did.
We met Jacob last Sunday when he persuaded his brother Esau
to trade his birthright for a bowl of stew. But that wasn’t all he did. Jacob
stole their father’s deathbed blessing by pretending to be Esau. He dressed up
in Esau’s clothes knowing that old man Isaac was half blind and would never
know the difference. And then when Esau went gunning for him, Jacob did what
slippery characters always do when they get in trouble. He ran away. Now, the
Bible is kind to Jacob. While one text tells us that he took to his heels to
get away from Esau, another says that he decided to go back to his tribal home
to get a wife. Who knows which story is true; maybe both of them have some
truth in them. In any case, Jacob headed north, far away from Esau; and far
away from his god, as well.
In those days, every piece of land had its own god. No one
ever imagined that one god could be everywhere! Canaan had one set of gods,
Egypt had another, Syria had yet another. And so, when Jacob hightailed it
north towards his tribal home where his uncle Laban lived, I’m sure that he
hoped he would escape not only Esau, but also the god who had shown himself to
Abraham in Canaan. After all, that god just might take Esau’s side and demand
justice. Maybe by heading north, Jacob could hide from Abraham’s god, just like
Adam and Eve had tried to do back in the Garden of Eden. But it didn’t work out
any better for Jacob than it did for Adam and Eve.
As the story goes (Genesis 28:10-22), while Jacob was
sleeping one night during his travels, he had a vision of a ladder that went all
the way from heaven to earth. Heavenly beings were climbing up and down on it,
traveling between heaven and earth; and at the very top was the god of Abraham
– the god that Jacob thought he had left behind. And that god gave Jacob a
message! “I am the god of your father Abraham and of your father Isaac,” he
said. “I will give you this land and make your descendents like the dust of the
earth. And I will watch over you and be with you wherever you go. I won’t leave
you until I have done what I have promised to do!” Jacob must have been
astonished. Why, he hadn’t left the Lord behind any more than he could leave
behind his own shadow! The god of Abraham and Isaac – his god – was going right along with him. No wonder he raised a
stone of remembrance when he got up in the morning! The experience of realizing
that God is present in our lives when we think we’ve slipped away from him is
worth remembering.
And Jacob’s experience was repeated time and time again. God
was in Egypt with the Hebrew slaves; and led them through the wilderness as
they traveled to the Promised Land. God was with Jonah when he ran that way instead of going this way; and was even in the belly of
the fish that swallowed him. God was with the exiled Israelites in Babylon; and
with Daniel when he was thrown into a den of lions. In fact, so many people
felt the presence of God in faraway places that the psalmist wrote in
astonishment, “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your
presence? If I ascend to heaven and live with the gods, you are there. If I
descend to the land where the dead live eternally in the shadows, you are
there. If I fly away with the fading night and dwell in the chaos of the depths
of the sea, even there you hold me by
the hand, and lead me with your presence!” There is no place that God is not.
Wherever we are, God is there, closer than our own breath.
Now, that’s a little bit scary to some folks. Do I mean to
say that there’s no place that we can get away from God? Am I saying that
whatever our mistakes, whatever our failings, whatever our sins may be, we
can’t hide them from God by running away? Is God with us even in the toughest
situations of our lives? Yep, that’s what I’m saying. God knows exactly who we
are, where we are, and what we’ve done every minute of every day. Oh, we can
try to get away, but just about the time that we think we’ve finally shaken God
off our trail, we feel a tap on our shoulder; and when we turn around, there’s
God standing right behind us! If we insist on playing hide and seek with God,
we will quickly find that we have nowhere to hide.
But why would we want to run away from God? God loves us;
God forgives us; and God wants more than anything to heal us of all our pain. God
is searching for us even harder than we’re trying to hide from him. But he’s
not looking for us to punish us. He’s looking for us because he loves us! Jesus
assured us of that when he told us that God is searching for us as hard as a woman
who has lost a coin; and we’re more valuable to God than that coin. God is
searching for us as hard as a shepherd who has lost one of his lambs; and we’re
more valuable to God than that lamb is to the shepherd. Why, God is searching
for us even harder than the Publisher’s Clearing House representative is
searching for the lucky person who has just won three million dollars! (I don’t
think that Jesus used that particular comparison, but he might use it if he
were living today.)
Yes, hide and seek is a wonderful children’s game. But when we play it, and when it gets in the way
of our relationship with God – well, maybe it’s time to give it up. Maybe it’s
time to come out of hiding and to allow our God to find us at last. After all,
God has been there all along. And in the end, God will sweep us into a bear hug,
give us a big kiss, and declare, “I’ve been looking all over for you! It’s
about time you came out of there. Welcome home!”
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