Christianity isn’t a game of hide and seek!

Have you ever wondered why a Christian’s relationship with the Lord can, at times, seem a little like “hide and seek”?  In her book “The God of All Comfort,” Hannah Whitall Smith relates a story where a Christian worker asked a little girl, “Have you found the Saviour?” The little girl replied with wonder and amazement, “Why, I did not know the Saviour was lost” (11)!

The words seek and find do appear in the New Testament quite often. That’s perhaps why it’s so easy to get our role and the Lord’s confused. We get to thinking that Christ is racing around the next corner, and we can’t quite catch up. …Worst of all, we might think that we have done such bad things that the Lord is intentionally avoiding us.

What we need to realize is that this seeking and finding game is disproved in Jesus’ parables. In the parable of the good Shepherd, for example, the Shepherd searches out and finds the sheep (Mark 18:12; Luke 15:4). In his parable of the prodigal son, the father runs to meet the son (Luke 15:20). … After his resurrection, he sought out the men on the walk to Emmaus (Luke 24:15). …And on the Damascus road, he sought out Paul who was running away from him as fast as he could by persecuting Christians (Acts 9:3-5).

Most amazingly, down through the centuries and today, the living Lord comes to us. His presence is recorded in the simple words of prayers and poetry and in the writings of the mystics and in the hearts of the penitent. …I had completely given up chasing after Christ when he came to me. What I’ve learned since that day is that my part is the yielding—my part is the surrender of self. His part is to find and to fill and to fulfill.

If we must continue to think of our Christian life as a game of hide and seek, we are the ones who are hiding. We’re hiding from our need for God. We’re hiding in our pride and our egotism. We’re hiding in our self-righteousness and our judgments. …But the Lord will get to us, to the part in our soul that hears him—ready or not. (Yielding to Wonder, chapter 2)