My favorite games as a child was “Hide & Seek.” I remember the neighborhood kids gathering together after supper. We lived in Sewickly, Pennsylvania, in a complex of duplexes. All the backyards were open, no fences in sight. We would get together and decide what game to play and “Hide & Seek” was usually it. It didn’t require any equipment, just a bit of imagination. Someone would be designated “seeker” and would shut their eyes and count to 50 or 100 and all the others would scatter seeking places to “hide.” If someone could hide and not be found, they were declared the winner as they emerged from their hiding place.
Gen 3:8-9: “And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden. Then the LORD God called to Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” [NKJV]
God would come in the cool of the day to the Garden and Adam and Eve would fellowship with Him. Until that one day when Adam and Eve began a game of “Hide & Seek” with God. God had only given them one rule of law to obey, don’t eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. They could not even keep that one law. The enemy of their soul convinced them that the true path of knowledge was found not in obedience, but in disobedience. He lied. They sinned. And we all suffer the consequences.
Everyone born into the human race since has played the game of “Hide & Seek” with God. We hide. He seeks. And unlike the game we played as children, we become winners when we are “found” and called out of our hiding place. To remain hidden is to lose, to lose everything.
