Pastor Paul Fraser

Playing “Hide and Go Seek” with my kids, in our house, when they were very young was always a bunch of fun. Especially when my youngest daughter was little. She loved to play that game with me.

It was a game that didn’t require a lot of effort by me to play and so many times I would concede in playing “one more time”. She couldn’t count all the way to 10 in those days, so numbers ranging from 1-10 were listed in different orders every time we played. (Although, somehow she always ended on the number 10) She’d rattle off the numbers, ending on 10 and up the stairs she would climb asking in a loud voice where I was hiding.

She would have a specific order as she would perimeter sweep the 2nd floor of our house. She would first check her room asking if I was in there. Same with the boys bedroom and the bathroom. Finally she would end up in our room and instinctively walk right to the curtains where my size 10.5 feet were sticking out. She’d pull back the curtain with a confident declaration would say “I FOUND YOU!” I would say, “Camryn, you’re so brilliant, would like to play again?” She say yes and skip excitedly out the bedroom door, I’d pull the curtain back and she’d go through the counting, the perimeter sweep, and the inevitable discovery of me behind the curtain. She’d again say “I FOUND YOU” which would cue my line to say “Camryn, you’re so brilliant, would you like to play again?” This routine would happen several more times each session of “Hide and Go Seek” we would play.

Some time later as I was thinking about how Cammie and I used to play “Hide and Go Seek”, God caught me off guard with one of those memorable teaching moments. If I wanted to, I could probably beat a 4 year old in a game of “Hide and Go Seek” (hopefully). But as a Father, where’s the fun in that? The fun part was being found and the joy that filled my daughters heart when she found me.

Have you ever been in a season where you can’t find God? Can’t hear His voice? Stuck in a rut spiritually and seemingly everywhere you look, God is nowhere to be seen? I’ve felt that before, more than I would probably like to admit. But God taught me something about what to do in those seasons of what seems like a spiritually disconnected time. Like me with Camryn, God desperately wants to be found, so God always hides in the same places!!

He hides in prayer in and worship. He hides in fasting and service. He hides in quietness and meditation on His Word. He hides in encouraging words from friends and family. He hides in the all the same places we found Him before, because he really wants to be found!!

Is it that God hides, or we place too many things in front of Him that He seems hidden behind all of our busyness or stuff? Or is it both? Maybe something for us all to think about for our own lives…..

God, our Heavenly Father, wants to be found by you and to be found by me. Time to count to ten, open our eyes and go back to the spaces where we found God hiding before…..He’s there waiting to hear you say “I FOUND YOU”!