Hide And Seek

Do any of you remember playing games of Hide and Seek as a child? I do. It was a huge favourite. One of my parents would begin counting backwards from ten, allowing me time to search out the best hiding place. I would scurry through the house, trying to be as light on my feet as possible. I didn’t want to give them any clues about where I was going. All the while, I was listening, and the closer they got to the end of the countdown, the more my heart pounded. Sometimes I barely got into my chosen corner before I heard those dreaded words: “Ready or not I’m coming!”

My hiding places were never very imaginative, so my parents always found me easily. Plus, when I was tiny, I didn’t understand the basic fact that they could see and I couldn’t, so I used to just stand there in plain sight with my eyes closed thinking that meant they wouldn’t be able to find me. If I couldn’t see them, then why should they see me?

The first ever game of Hide and Seek wasn’t played by children and their parents, but by the original man and woman – Adam and Eve, and they chose to play it with God. What a crazy idea, considering God knows everything. What made them think they could hide from him? Yet they did. Or rather, they tried.

What had caused the first couple to hide from God? Sadly, it was sin. I’m sure many of us have read the opening three chapters of Genesis. Just to recap, Almighty God created a perfectly beautiful world in just six days. The pinnacle of his creation was mankind. On the sixth day, God made Adam, and he was so pleased that he declared his creating to be very good. After his previous works, he had simply said it was good, so clearly Adam was a cut above the rest. Why did God make a man? Why didn’t he just stick to birds, animals, and fish? Well, Genesis 1 verses 26-27 says: “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” Man was to have dominion over everything else God had made, and best of all, Adam was formed in the very image of God himself. What a privilege!

The relationship between God and Adam must have been really special. In Genesis 2, we are told that God brought all the animals to Adam to see what he would name them, and the names Adam chose were the ones that stuck. I love this because it shows God allowing man to be involved in his work. The very thought of God taking delight in Adam naming those animals makes me smile. Such fellowship and friendliness.

God loved Adam so much that he realised simply having the animals for company wasn’t going to be enough. That’s why he made him a companion – a woman named Eve. God could have said that being with the Almighty should have been enough for Adam, but he was so sensitive to Adam’s needs.

We don’t know how long Adam and Eve lived in perfect communion with God in the garden of Eden because the Bible doesn’t tell us. Did time even mean anything back then? All we do know is there was one thing the first couple weren’t meant to do – one tree from which they weren’t permitted to eat, but Satan tempted Eve in the form of a serpent and tried to convince her God was depriving them of something good. Isn’t that what he always does with us? Doesn’t he whisper words like: “God is holding out on you. He’s trying to stop you from having fun – from having the best.”

Once Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, sin entered the world, and our history has been a downhill struggle ever since. God hadn’t wanted them to know about good and evil because he knew it would taint their innocence. Indeed, it did, because the first thing they realised was that they were naked, and they quickly sewed leaves together to make coverings for themselves.

The next thing that happened is one of the saddest events in the Bible, because it is the first ever recorded game of Hide and Seek, where Adam and Eve are doing the hiding, and God is seeking them out. Genesis 3 verse 8 says: “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

As we read this, we get the impression that it was a regular thing for God to meet with Adam and Eve in the cool of the day to share some companionable time together. I imagine this was something both the couple and their Creator looked forward to. Yet on this occasion something had changed, and Adam and Eve were hiding. In verse 9, God calls out to Adam, and we can feel his sadness. In verse 10, Adam replies that he’s hiding because he knows he’s naked. Yet hasn’t he always been naked during his meetings with God? Why does it suddenly matter?

Sin will always bring with it feelings of guilt and shame. Just like with Adam and Eve, it reveals our nakedness. Maybe not in the physical sense, but definitely in the spiritual. When sin entered the world through that one act of rebellion, it began a cycle that mankind has struggled to break out of ever since. We go through seasons of close fellowship with God, and then we are lured into sin, which spins us into a cycle of guilt and shame, which in turn separates us from our Father. And all the time, he is calling out: “Where are you?”

We’ve all been there. If there is unconfessed sin in our lives, we struggle to pray. It feels as if a barrier has gone up between us and God – a barrier of our own making. However, Jesus’ death on the Cross tore that barrier down. Adam and Eve had to leave the garden. God had no choice but to evict them, because if they had eaten from the tree of life, they would have lived eternally in their sin. Sin does separate us from God because a holy God cannot look upon it, but before the first sin was ever committed, God already had a solution.

In Old Testament times, animal sacrifices were offered to atone for sin, but every time a new sin was committed, another animal had to be offered. Again, it was a cycle. However, Jesus’ death on the Cross delt with sin once for all. Yes, it is still a reality in our lives. I’m sure I sin every day, but I don’t have to be consumed by guilt and shame anymore. I don’t have to allow sin to separate me from my Saviour. Jesus has opened up the way of forgiveness, so all I have to do is ask for it.

It sounds so simple, and I know it’s not. I’m certainly not making light of sin, because God takes it very seriously and so should we. I am just grateful that I never need to be separated from my Father again – that spiritually, I can freely eat from the tree of life in the form of Jesus, because he paid the price for my sin once and for all.

If today you find yourself in that painful cycle of sin, shame, guilt, and hiding, I want to encourage you to do the very thing your enemy is trying to keep you from doing. Fall on your knees before Jesus, tell Him you are sincerely sorry, and ask Him to help you learn from your mistake so you will not keep falling into the same trap. Then reach out and receive his gift of forgiveness. Come out of hiding and stand in the light of His presence. Embrace the gift He died to give you. Eat with thankfulness the fruit from the tree of life and walk with your Saviour in the cool of the day. he wants to hold your hand and never let it go.