My husband built a clubhouse in our backyard this year for our three boys, but I keep threatening to turn it into “Mama’s Secret Hideout,” for those days when the house is a mess, the laundry is piled high, dinner isn’t ready, and I feel like a failure. I’m sure every mama can relate to those days, right? Hands up, everyone who has ever hid in a closet with a bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs, or is it just me??? I’d hide in the bathroom, but let’s be honest; It wouldn’t be long before some pudgy fingers found their way under the door to the soundtrack of, “Mama….are you in here???” or the door handle got rattled in a pint-sized effort to break in.
For real, some days, we just wanna run away and hide.
I love the simple theme of We The Kingdom’s, “God So Loved” worship anthem. It’s the time-honored clarion call to the weary prodigal. The song closes with my favorite line, “Bring all your failures, bring your addictions, come lay them down at the foot of the cross. Jesus is waiting. God SO loved the world.”
It’s beautiful, isn’t it?
But…it’s not our human instinct to run to Jesus with an armload of our failure, is it? It’s much more human to hide it. When I fail, my instinct is to hide. And, that’s not a new thing.
After the fall, Adam and Eve covered themselves with animal skin and hid – even though the very presence of God was literally right there in the garden with them.
After he killed a man, Moses hid himself and his family away in Midian as a shepherd after living as a prince.
After God asked Jonah to preach to the people of Ninevah, whom he hated, Jonah effectively said no to God, and then hid on a ship going the opposite direction.
Elijah ran away to Be’ersheeba after he angered the queen, even though he had just seen God answer his prayers and bring down fire from Heaven.
Peter tried to hide himself in a crowd of people after he denied Jesus.
When we fail, or fall, or fear, our human-ness often chooses hiding as our default response. In Psalm 139, the Psalmist asks the question – where can I go from your Spirit…where can I flee from your presence? It’s a rhetorical question, really. God asks one Himself in Jeremiah 23:24, “Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? declares the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? declares the Lord.”
The Psalmist knows the answer….wherever I go…”you are there.”
We hide from God because we don’t want to show ourselves to Him in our vulnerable state of failure or fear, so instead, we retreat into whatever our coping mechanism is. See, hiding doesn’t always look like getting on a boat, or hiding in a cave or traveling to a far-away land—sometimes, it does, but for many of us, hiding can look like incessant busyness, isolation, avoidance, spending money to self-medicate, or an unhealthy dwelling on self.
Failure is human.
Fear is human.
Trouble, and toil, and despair, and even depression and anxiety are human experiences.
But, may I encourage you today?
If you find yourself feeling that instinct to hide…if you recognize yourself hiding away in your own ability, your own power, your own experience…the very One you may be hiding from is waiting for you with open arms. He is your hiding place. There is no place you can go that He is not there. He delights in meeting you in your secret places. Tucked inside His strong arms, we find freedom to parent better, “friend” better, write better, lead better, love better, and live better.
Run to HIM. Hide in HIM.
“You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with songs of deliverance.” - Psalm 32:7
Jesus is waiting…God SO loved the world.
- Corrina Jennings