The best game ever invented was hide and seek. It has international acclaim as kids (and surprisingly sometimes adults) play it globally strategically and objectively. The object of the game is to hide inconspicuously (sometimes in plain sight) without being caught. “Hiding” is the easy part, seeking, however, is often most challenging.
My sister, brother, and I would play in the house for hours on end when our mother and father were away from home (yes, we broke a lot of stuff). We would hide in the kitchen cabinet, behind the curtains, under the bed, behind the couch, or in the dryer. Seeking is exhaustingly difficult, especially if you are slow and come up empty handed. Despite our best effort we were less than successful in achieving the desired outcome, finding that which is hidden from us.
Even so today, as adults we play the same game, but with real life consequences, as our effort to find meaningful answers leads us wayward, oftentimes in the wrong direction. For the things we seek to satisfy us (our flesh), are temporal, and while not always rooted in some form of sin, may still cause great and irreparable harm, to which we are unable to free ourselves.
When searching, we look to fill the gaps in our lives as a means of achieving an accepted outcome, but we do it as a matter of absence, rather than because of what we already have, and yet God is telling us to seek him with the entirety of who we are, our heart, soul and mind.
Today’s episode is titled.
Searching for What?
Isaiah 55:6
Seek you the LORD while he may be found, call on him while he is near.
To rightly answer the question, there is a corresponding one as well. Who is God to you? Now, for the sake of plainness I am not referring to God as perceived by religious traditions, regular church attendance, and a multitude of other associated activities, but rather our fellowship with him when we're alone and he sees the fullness of our nakedness, our sin, our suffering, our heartache, our woundedness, our greatest fears, and every single one of our vulnerabilities. To seek him, however, we must know who he is. While scripture clearly depicts in vivid detail who God is, there is a song, by the late James Cleveland, entitled as such in which he simply declares, over and over, “God is.”
