Playing hide and seek with God

Remember playing hide and seek when you were a child, frantically running and searching for the best place to hide? Waiting and holding your breath when the seeker walks by so you won't get caught? Many a game finished with the only the streetlights and the seeker's call for you to return home to be declared the winner.

God does not play hide and seek, at least not the way we do. When we hide, we do not want to be found. In our game being found is bad. God's hide and seek is one that rewards those who seek him accompanied with the promise that he will be found because he is not hiding.

Playing hide and seek with God is not finding him, but discovering his unique individual purposes for our lives. Proverbs 25:2 shares that, "It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out."

Most of us would love to have a road map published for our lives describing the places we will go and things we will do. Yet discovering God's purpose is not as easy as casually picking up a road map from the rest stop. God finds glory in concealing things because God is complex, and he has created us to be complex beings. We are made up of complex ranges of emotions, desires and interests as unique as our fingerprint. God conceals things so that two complex beings enter into a complex relationship of discovery.

Concealing is not the sense of hiding and never wanting to be found. Concealing is the idea that something needs to be uncovered. It is glorious to God to conceal things for it brings his creation back to him.

It causes men and women to seek him through prayer, ancient but living scripture and meditation.

It is glorious to conceal things because there is tremendous value when the struggle actually reveals what is to come. The reward of kings is found through a determined struggle of seeking out meaning, purpose and value. That which is most valuable is that which has been sought out, worked and pressed for.

The reward God has is not necessarily finding his purpose but the shaping done during the process. Play today and enjoy the game.

Rob Hurtgen is a husband, father and serves as the associate pastor at the First Baptist Church in Jackson.