Hide and Seek

Costumes are a great way of trying on another personality or donning an acceptable disguise. I would not embarrass our children with specifics of their actual photos, but these vintage costumed children remind of me many dress-up days in the past. Our costume box still holds a treasure trove of memories.

When our children were very young, their favorite bath time game for awhile was to hide under a towel and see if I could find them. They would ball up on the floor with faces hidden in hands and little curved backbones simulating a miniature dinosaur emitting muffled giggles because they knew they were invisible. Since they could not see us, they thought we could not see them. I would search around the room, then with great fanfare uncover the little one to peals of laughter and hugs. There was such delight in being found! This game never got old, though it ended the same way every time.

There must be universal appeal in playing variations on hide and seek. We love to hide, and we also like to be found. Remember what it was like to hide, and no one came to find you? Maybe the other kids had found each other and had moved on to another game, but to the one who was left hiding, the feeling was definitely a let-down. We were left out. Overlooked. Abandoned.

That does not happen in our relationship to God. This is good news.

God is always seeking us, ever drawing us out and inviting us into fellowship. The Lord God is not content until all God's children are found. We call this working of grace in our lives God's prevenient grace: That which goes before us, whether or not we are aware of it - and I love this old-fashioned word - this grace woos us, drawing us tenderly toward Love. What a picture of a loving heavenly father and nurturing parent who seeks out a hiding child as though to say, "I know you, and I love you. I take great delight in you."

A favorite children's book, Guess How Much I Love You, by Sam McBratney, is a memorable illustration of going to attention-getting extremes to prove the point of one's love and devotion. Little Nut-Brown Hare discovers that love is not an easy thing to measure. It's a nice read for adults too.

Someone else expressed this sense of wonder beautifully centuries ago, marveling at God's nature - God's ability to be utterly present with us:

If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there Your hand shall lead me,
and Your right hand shall hold me fast. Psalm 139: 9-10

There is no place we can flee from God's presence. In our discomfort or embarrassment, many times we run and hide. We hide and sometimes declare we don't want to be found. And just as children do, adults have a hard time admitting what is at the root of our emotions. We tend to blame others and lash out. When will we ever learn?

Even when we are not intentionally hiding, in the deepest pit when we may feel abandoned, we are not abandoned. We are held fast - securely. Attributing hands to God Who is spirit need not be a stumbling block. The expression occurs frequently in scripture and is an acknowledgment of God's power, authority and exalted position.

There is a memorable song by Natalie Grant, "Held" which I love. The chorus reads:

This is what it means to be held
how it feels
when the sacred is torn from your life and you survive.
This is what it is to be loved
and to know
that the promise is when everything fell,
we'd be held.

This is what it means to be held...

We have occasions to think of that often. Life doesn't grant a reprieve from pain and loss because we profess faith or belong to a particular denomination or house of worship. We remember that the rain 'falls on the just and the unjust.' But we can know the companionship of the One who will not leave us alone nor forsake us.

And, at the end of the day, we are never left 'hiding under the towel' believing that we've so cleverly disguised ourselves that no one will know the real us. We may fool ourselves for awhile, and we may even distract others along the way, but there is One who sees us as we are - naked and bare under our disguises - and loves us anyway.

This will be an everlasting love!

Seeing the Invisible

Lately I have been reflecting on how we see things. How we see ourselves...how we see others...how we see God - all of these figure largely into our outlook on Life.

If we ever find that we are spending a little too much time contemplating ourselves, there is an effective antidote: Do something for someone else. I had several such moments today.

Today our church hosted a Thanksgiving Feast and worship service downtown for those who call the streets of this city home. Men and women of varying ages who are homeless and likely have no family around whose table to gather Thursday, made their way to festively decorated tables. Volunteers had prepared abundant food and served plates to each one individually. Moms, dads, children, grandchildren, college students, retirees, single adults - the host of servers defied categorization.

This event is not a one hit wonder, a tip of the hat to doing a good deed for the homeless that pays some collective guilt dues for proximity to a growing homeless population in this capitol city. Grace Place is the ongoing ministry that provides a place each day for homeless men and women to get a hot meal, shower, get in from the weather, and exposure to new skills and hobbies ranging from rooftop gardening to produce food for meals, to art, music, personal management, and counseling. After another center closed this fall, Grace Place attendance jumped from 30 to 100 overnight, I was told.

One artist-dad member who is an exquisite portrait painter and his five year old son volunteer each Thursday at Grace Place. They paint and do art projects with the guests of Grace Place. One man paints with dots. Painted dots beside painted dots adorn his paper. He calls them 'skittles'. The young boy, at first tentative when accompanying his father in this new venture, has developed his own confidence in connecting with the people. Today little Ren brought a pack of skittles to give the man; A simple gift from a young child said, "I notice you."

One man joked with me to put that plate of food in his friend's drawstring bag so he could eat it later. They laughed that hearty cackle-laugh they must have done many times and pulled out the only contents of the bag: a yellow polytarp with grommets for tying a shelter. That was all he had on his back. A rather haunting sight lingers as I reflect and end the day in my comfortable home.

Another church member/volunteer with distinctive British accent was sitting at the table next to a homeless man (even the way I write that looks as impersonal as it is, doesn't it?). My friend said, "This man has the bearing of one who could be a CEO of a company. Can we not make some connections between him and others and see how to find him some mentors and perhaps help him find a job?" He was not content merely to serve a few plates and go back to work. No discharge of a duty for this man. He was ready to dig a little deeper and help find solutions for challenging problems. All this from a man who has faced the death of his son a few months ago and who now is trying to reach out to others to keep them from dying inside from the painful malady of hopelessness.

Cicero, a poet in residence at Grace Place who is a self-described recovering drug addict, gave a poem he had written as a part of the worship service, "How Can You Say 'No' to This Man?" referring to the love of Jesus.

A choir of voices - homeless all - sang a medley of praise songs and hymns that they had only rehearsed four times. Though they had folders with sheet music, I'll wager that not all could read. But they sang their hearts out, ending with "We Are an Offering." They were.

And at the end, my daughter exited quickly and, before I knew it, was bending beside Cicero seated in his wheelchair, to talk about his poetry and thank him. My heart was strangely warmed.

Food and homemade desserts were abundant. No one was turned away. Refills and seconds continued to bless the hungry and the filled alike.

Some of us will have another Thanksgiving feast on Thursday with warm kitchens and fragrant aromas,traditional dishes, family favorites, and someone who cares enough to make special desserts and prepare your sweet potatoes with marshmallows or cinnamon pecans depending on how you like them. But I met some folks today who will not have that option. No one has the porch light on for them.

Thanks be to God for willing hearts and hands who notice those who are invisible to some people every day among us....who can see through the street dirt, the brokenness, the hard edges sometimes... and who find beneath it embers of life that are not yet extinguished and a shared humanity that needs a second chance. We love and serve the God of second chances.

"I never give up on anyone, because God never gives up on anyone." Rev. Dr. Ross Olivier

And I'm thankful for folks like Sally and Leslie, who may not have eyes in the back of their heads, but the eyes of their hearts are open wide, and they know how to see rightly!