Our daughter was missing and my wife was in hysterics. The police filled our driveway with red and blue lights and a parent’s worst nightmare was becoming a reality.
Thoughts of abductions and why someone would steal a cute little girl swirled through minds. Nothing good could come of this.
And then my daughter emerged from under her bed. She had been hiding, thinking it would be funny, not terrifying.
Hide and seek is one of the earliest games we play. And the seek-and-hide game of Sardines is an old youth group variant. There can be something fun about searching and finding; a wonderful tension in hiding and hoping not to get found.
When I was in 8th grade, our teacher took the boys in our class on a school-sanctioned camping trip. We had a great time playing hide and seek in the California desert. But when it was our teacher’s turn to hide, we boys gave up after a couple minutes and went to bed. Our teacher wasn’t a happy man when he returned to camp half an hour later to find us all asleep, feeling stupid for having hidden so long.
Most of the hiding we engage in isn’t a game. It’s a symptom of broken relationships. The more we hide, the less healthy and whole are our relationships.
Hidden agendas. Secret stashes. Sneaked peeks. Hidden habits. Subtle dishonesties. Untold stories. Alternative lives.
The less we share of ourselves, the less we are known.
The less honesty we have, the less depth we can have in our relationships.
Can a false me really be loved? If you love the facade I put forward, have you actually loved me?
The Bible is packed with stories of hiding, the most well-known being the first. In Genesis 3, the woman and the man grab a bite to eat. And when they discover the consequences of eating the forbidden fruit, they cover themselves and hide from God.
Interestingly, God plays along with their hiding and we have our first instance of hide and seek. “Where are you?” he asks.
Now, having God ask you where you are may sound disingenuous. He’s God. He knows. But that’s not what’s going on here. By asking the question, he takes the first step in reengaging a broken relationship. He opens up the possibility of an answer. He creates space for the man and woman to come out of hiding. And they do, proving the graciousness of the question.
The rest of the Scriptures tell the story of God asking that same question again and again to every one of us: Where are you? This is why the most basic prayer is: Here I am. We step out of the isolation of hiding and are present to the God who is present to us.
Psalm 32 is one of our best companions in this move away from isolating ourselves by our secret sins and moving back into relational connectedness through honest confession.
The psalm begins by stating that the blessed life is the forgiven life, the life that isn’t itself covered over, but instead has its sins covered over.
Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the one
whose sin the LORD does not count against them
and in whose spirit is no deceit (Ps. 32:1-2).
To hide is to be deceitful. Even if there is no overt lie, we hiders are adept at concealing the truth about ourselves and our deeds. We feel it will keep us from pain. It may do so, but what it really keeps us from is forgiveness. So, instead of our sins being dealt with, they continue to pile up, creating further and further isolation.
But when we uncover our sins before God, he covers them over himself with forgiveness. When we recount them before him, he doesn’t count them against us.
There is a refusal here to lie about our sins, a refusal to make them seem less than they are, a refusal to call them mistakes, a refusal to blame them on God.
When I kept silent,
my bones wasted away
through my groaning all day long.
For day and night
your hand was heavy on me;
my strength was sapped
as in the heat of summer.
Then I acknowledged my sin to you
and did not cover up my iniquity.
I said, “I will confess
my transgressions to the LORD.”
And you forgave
the guilt of my sin (Ps. 32:3-5).
I have some friends who were caught by their wives after years of being defeated by sexual addiction. They engaged in differing combinations of the same things: pornography, strip clubs, and adulterous relationships.
And they all agree that the best thing that could ever happen to them was getting caught. It ended the hiding. It gave them the ability to finally come clean.
Even more than the sins themselves, the secrecy of them was killing their souls. And finally being able to speak the truth after years of fear of being exposed was the greatest relief they’d ever experienced.
David, our psalm-writer here, probably has in mind here his affair with Bathsheba and its aftermath of deception, manipulation, and murder (2 Sam. 11). But he could just as easily have been me buying things online and hiding them from my wife or sneaking little sweet snacks and shoving the wrappers under other things in the trash bin. Our secrets always injure our souls.
David describes the experience like a wasting disease, like a cancer of the soul. He also describes it like a hand heavy on him (which makes me think about hiking with one of my boys who will sometimes lean on me as we hike, making my steps a lot more difficult). And adding a third metaphor, he describes it as the energy-sapping heat of the summer sun, melting him like wax.
Our sins affect our bodies because they affect our consciences. An exhausted soul leads to an exhausted body.
But moving from silence to acknowledgement brings forgiveness and a new wholeness.
When we hide, we are false all the way through. We have a false exterior which doesn’t match our deeds. And we have a false interior which doesn’t match who God made us to be. But when we confess our sins, we replace these two false people with a true, whole person.
And so, having reflected on his personal experience, David turns outward and makes a general call to action for all God’s people.
Therefore let all the faithful pray to you
while you may be found;
surely the rising of the mighty waters
will not reach them (Ps. 32:6)
God isn’t hiding from us. We’re the hiders. But it can seem as if he’s ditching us like my fiends and I ditched our teacher in 8th grade. Much of that seeming hiddenness is the result of our hiding, not his.
So, David urges us to turn toward God. To pray. To be honest. To speak the truth about our sins. It’ll keep the chaos at bay far better than silence will. Do this, David urges, before the consequences of sin become too much to bear. “While you may be found” isn’t about God being unfindable in the future but is about running out of time to find him.
And having stepped out of hiding, David discovers that God is himself a hiding place. He is so not as a secret lair, but as a safe place.
You are my hiding place;
you will protect me from trouble
and surround me with songs of deliverance (Ps. 32:7).
This personal declaration of renewed faith leads to a two-verse speech which could be from either the psalmist or from God.
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.
Do not be like the horse or the mule,
which have no understanding
but must be controlled by bit and bridle
or they will not come to you (Ps. 32:8-9).
If from David, he’s saying, “Now that I know the best way to go, I’ll offer my hard-earned wisdom to you. Don’t be stubborn like I was. Don’t be that stupid! It only got me into trouble. Don’t require a bit and bridle.”
If from God, he’s saying, “Learn by heart how to live the best life. Here are my Scriptures, listen to them, they are my loving voice to you. I’d much prefer you learn from them than from the more painful methods of training beasts. But I’ll leave that choice up to you.”
Many are the woes of the wicked,
but the LORD’s unfailing love
surrounds the one who trusts in him (Ps. 32:10).
There’s only sorrow in our silence. But there’s a full immersion in love when we dive into trusting God, confessing everything to him.
And that trust leads to the best kind of life possible which itself spills out as a praising life, the kind of life that bursts into song because it’s been put back together.
And so the hidden life becomes the worshiping life, moving from isolation to celebration through the act of honest, humble confession.
Questions for reflection
What little secret thing have you done recently (e.g. sneaking junk food, buying something you feel awkward about, breaking something)? Why did you do it secretly instead of openly? What were you afraid of?
The first step toward forgiveness is acknowledging what you’ve done and confessing it. Why is this so hard for us? Why is it absolutely necessary if there’s going to be real forgiveness?
Have you been burned by trusting someone with deeply personal information about yourself? Do you trust that God will still love you if you confess your sins to him?
Prayer of response
Vulnerability is hard for me, Lord. As I cease my hiding, be my hiding place. As I uncover my soul, cover me with your forgiveness. I am counting on you to not count my sins against me. Unburden me and give me a set-free heart of joy. In Jesus. Amen.
Key verse for continued meditation and memorization
Blessed is the one
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered (Ps. 32:1).