By Elin Henderson
“…and Adam and his
wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of
the garden.”
Genesis
3:8 (NKJV, emphasis added)
We
all know that feeling as parents. We walk into a room, spot a disaster of some
kind, and encounter a silence like no other. There isn’t a soul to be found,
seen or heard. And we all know what has happened: Someone is hiding and,
generally speaking, it is the perpetrator!
From
the time we are little, the number one response to doing wrong is usually
hiding. This negative behavior is nothing new but, in fact, is as old as
mankind itself. If you think about it, it was the first response to sin. Adam
and Eve knew they had sinned and they HID themselves. Imagine the silence God
encountered when He came down to walk with them in the garden that day!
Now
granted, as we get older, the hiding takes on different forms. It may or may
not be physical hiding. We might hide emotionally from people by always keeping
our relationships shallow. We might hide spiritually by avoiding encounters
with spiritual people or places. Either way, we see our nakedness - - our bare emptiness
and failure - - and we retreat to those bushes where we think we can find
safety and security. Then, like Adam and Eve, we try and cover ourselves with
leaves from those same bushes, like somehow that will hide our nakedness. What
we really end up hiding is who we really are. We try and appear in a “clothed”
form that isn’t really “us.”
It
isn’t hard to hide from people. They are easily fooled. In fact, we may
encounter many friends in the bushes with us, or walking around in the same
leaf outfits. Sometimes the guise goes so far that we even fool ourselves.
Hiding
from God, though, is another story. He knows the ugly, naked truth of where we
are, who we are, and what we have done, but unlike a world that would judge us
or be fooled by us, he looks on us with love. He gently allures us from our
hiding places and graciously covers us with His clothes of splendor. He keeps
who we are as individuals intact, but covers us and makes us presentable so
that we can stand unashamed!
GOING
DEEPER:
1.
What are some reasons we hide? (Ex: fear, shame, regret…)
2.
Who else can you think of in Scripture who tried this “Hiding Tactic” either
with other people or God? (Hint: Moses, Jacob…)
FURTHER READING:
Oakwood’s
missionaries Elin Henderson (a registered nurse) and her husband Phil serve as
church planters with New Tribes in Mozambique,
Africa. Elin is mother to thirteen-year-old
Callie and ten-year-old Elias. They are currently in America on Home Assignment.
