But my attempts fail. If I am not visible to my lovelies, then their voice seeks me out: ‘Mom?’ Mo-o-o-mmm?’ ‘Where are you?‘ Someday I might be able to go to the bathroom without having to announce my plans. Maybe someday I won’t have to check in with someone (probably not).
My favorite hideaway that I visit in my day dreams involves mountains and a lake and a small cabin at water’s edge. It is green. It smells of the northwest. I have my coffee in one hand, a stack of books in the other and the sound of birds filling my ears. My heart sighs and I am at peace.
Then I wake to reality. I may not be able to physically hide, but I am learning where I can hide myself.
‘You are my hiding place, you will protect me from trouble, you surround me with songs of deliverance.’ Psalm 32 :7
What does hiding in the Lord look like?
I think of hiding places as being calm and still and secret, but how does this work in my everyday life? My everyday life is not calm, still and secret. It’s messy and noisy and involves a lot of people. In my everyday life, I am tired. In my everyday life, I sometimes forget to pay attention to life as it’s passing by.
How in the world do I tuck myself into Jesus while at the same time reaching out and ministering to my family? Practically speaking I cannot literally hide. I could tell my lovelies that we are going to play hide and forget the seek, but that won’t work. The seeking is where the fun is! There are too many things that require my attention and time. So what does hiding in Jesus look like?
It must, it needs to be a spiritual act. We live on two planes. What our spirits are engaged in and what our physical selves are doing. The soul – our mind, will, and emotions – is the tie between the two parts.
What are the thoughts running through my mind? The verses in 2 Cor. 10: 3-5 instruct me to take every thought captive and bring it under the authority of Jesus. My spirit must be engaged with what my soul is thinking and feeling.
Living in awareness of where our thoughts take us is one key to staying hidden in Christ.
So I tell myself: Think about Christ. Think about his love and promises. Practice living peace, love, joy, patience, goodness, self-control, kindness, faithfulness and gentleness.
Live aware.
The fight between lies and truth take place in the battlefield of my mind. The renegade thoughts attempt to disrupt the peace of God in my heart and to push me out of the hiding place. The truth of who Christ is and who I am and whose I am, keep me in the hiding place. Could taking my thoughts captive be another way of saying that I am hidden in Christ?
Hiding places bring to mind small, dark, narrow places, but really, what if, by just changing our mindset of what hiding places are, we find the spacious place of rest in Jesus?
He is light and in him there is no darkness. So, imagine his hiding place as being filledwith the most wonderful, warm light and everywhere else is darkness. Where would you rather be?
In the light.
The world outside of the light is dark and scary and it is hard to find the way. That place, the darkness, is just a step away from the light. One step and I can be plunged into the darkness. One step back and I find the light of his hiding place.
He is my hiding place. He is my protector. My anxious heart is soothed by songs of deliverance. And I have found my hiding place in Him.
‘You are my hiding place, you protect me from trouble, you surround me with songs of deliverance’.
May we rest in him and hide ourself in the light of his goodness and trust.
I find silence disconcerting. If silence lingers I think of a way to fill it. If silence lingers I wonder if I have done something wrong. If silence is accompanied by scowls, I grow insecure.
You see, if I can keep the conversation rolling long enough and make you laugh hard enough, then maybe, just maybe, you won’t see me and disapprove.
Somewhere along the way, I decided it was my job to make everyone around me happy by being who they wanted me to be or who I thought they wanted me to be. The problem with that? When things grow silent my first impulse is to take the blame for some nameless unknown offense. I offer myself up as a scapegoat because there must be something inherently wrong with me, right?
But when God is silent?
I freak.
Until I think about hiding places.
A really good hiding place is pretty quiet. It’s still. It’s silent. It’s a good kind of silent. The kind of silence that breathes.
Unless you’re scared. Then it’s not. But if it’s safe? Then it’s the best kind of quiet.
Psalm 27:5 ‘For he will hide me in his shelter in the day of trouble; he will conceal me under the cover of his tent; he will lift me high upon a rock.’
God is my safe place. He is my hiding place. It’s okay to hide from trouble and the best kind of hiding is in the safest of places and the safest of places are the quietest of places. What if God is silent not because he is angry, but because he is keeping me safe?
Then the silence becomes something good and beautiful. It becomes something to be thankful for.
What if silence became an opportunity to rest in the One who holds me close to his heart and hides me within himself?
When God is silent I have an opportunity to learn to wait. I learn to be still. I trust that he is working in my circumstance and in me.
What if in the silence we learn to wait on him? What if in the silence we learn to be still? What if in the silence we learn to let him work and stop striving for solutions? What if we viewed God’s silence as an opportunity to trust him more?
I am learning to be okay with sitting quietly with someone. I am learning to enjoy another’s presence without the need for words. (this is hard!) I am also learning to enjoy the sweet comradery of God’s presence without the need for words. And the beautiful thing? If I am silent I find that God is not really silent, he is just waiting for me to hush up so he can speak. It’s in those still, silent places that I can hear his whispers reaching my frantic heart and I hear him clearly.
Silence doesn’t have to be scary. It doesn’t have to mean disapproval. Sometimes silence a really, really good thing to embrace. Silence reminds me to be still.
Do I still freak out when God is silent? A little. But now I do a few things:
I don’t automatically assume that I am inherently wrong.
I open myself up to the Holy Spirit and his work.
I wait patiently and trust his heart.
What happens the next time God is silent? I am going to be still, hush up, and listen. I just might hear his whisper.
Beauty and the Beast. I love this story. I even loved the Disney version. (If you get a chance, though, look up the story in a book of fairy tales–beautiful). I use to know the music. I use to sing along to the track in my ’76 Thunderbird, pretending to be Belle as she finds understanding and her destiny in the most unlikely of places: the castle of a beast.
When I look into a mirror, I don’t see beauty, I see a beast. I see the woman who has a sharp tongue oftener than a gentle one. I see a woman who is prone to impatience. I see a woman who distractedly listens to her people while trying to read an article or book or facebook post. I see a woman with freckles that make her face look dirty, especially in the summer, when she fails to use sunscreen. I see a woman who could stand to exercise more and eat less. I see a woman who failed at loving someone well. I see a woman who was quick to judge and slow to love. I see a woman struggling to love her neighbor.
I know that Jesus calls us to love our neighbor as ourselves. But let me ask this: How can I love my neighbor when I can’t stand myself? Why am I surprised when I struggle to accept my neighbor as they are when I cannot accept myself?
Do I try harder? Do I think positive thoughts? Do I re-imagine myself into a new being? Do I come up with a three-point plan to be executed to the best of my ability? Do I beat my breast and condemn myself in the hopes that that will produce more love for others?
Could this be approaching the problem backward? Love People, be kind to ourselves, love God. Or sometimes we try this approach: Work at loving God more so I can love people better. There is nothing inherently wrong with this statement. It’s a good and beautiful statement. But when we have to ‘work’ at loving God? But when we hate ourselves? When we despise ourselves? How does this fulfill the great commandment to love your neighbor as yourself?
I find this truth: My ability to love is directly related to my ability to know how deeply I am loved.
Loving others cannot be something that is a task I check off my list. The harder I try to love others, the harder it seems. But? What if I started believing the immense truth of how much I am loved by God.
1 John 4:19 ‘We love because he first loved us.’
Love is impossible without recognizing this truth. We don’t love God because we are commanded to love God. We love God because he first loved us and because of that first arrow of love to our hearts we are enabled and empowered by the Holy Spirit to love God with all our hearts, souls, mind, and body.
My ability to love others is tied directly to my ability to receive the TRUTH of God’s love for me. You see, when I reject myself, which is what I do when I condemn myself for my failures and my imperfections, I am rejecting the love of God for me and in me. I am setting myself up as judge and jury in my life and determining me guilty.
If we press further, we see that the judge has set us free through his son. Not to live and do as we please, but only to live and do as he pleases. And that, my friend, is receiving the love he has for you and me and then allowing that love to flow genuinely through us to others.
Sometimes we have to start small.
Sometimes we have to tentatively step out in faith and say–‘God, I love you because you first loved me. I am going to ruminate on 1 John 4:19 that says that I love because you first loved me. Any love I have for another person has to flow out of that truth.’
And then, I pray that we hear these words of God sung over us:
‘You belong to me, you belong to me, you’re mine through and through. You belong to me, my Child.’
It’s in my ‘beastliness’ that I reach for and receive God’s grace of his love for me as it flows over and through me. I find my destiny in the truth of God’s love for me.
