Is God hiding?

Some years ago one of the very youngest members of my church asked me a question: ‘Is God hiding?’  Coming to church regularly and hearing much talk of God but never actually seeing anyone of that name provoked this straight forward question in her young mind.  I can’t quite remember what I said at the time but it has kept me thinking ever since.  It’s a perfectly fair question for all of us to ask.  Why doesn’t God just come out and show himself for all to see?  Wouldn’t it make a vicar’s life easier, and indeed everyone’s life clearer, if God was revealed in glorious majesty, on the clouds of heaven?

There seem to be two possible beginnings of an answer to that kind of question.  Either God is not there at all or he has good reasons for being elusive.  If we say God is not there then that’s a neat enough answer, but not one that the majority of people in the world find convincing.  What good reason might God have for hiding?  I think it boils down to the nature of true love. God does want us to know him, but he will not force himself on us.  He wants us to choose him of our own free will.  Just imagine if God did reveal himself as I described, then surely all choice in the matter would be lost.  We would have to bow the knee to him and recognise his claim on our lives; there would be no hiding place.  I think God hides from us so that we, if we wish, can hide from him.  It’s a matter of respecting us as persons.

But God does not hide from us completely.  What we celebrate in this season is the wonderful news that God has come to us in the birth of his Son, born of Mary, born in human flesh.  One of his disciples was later to write:

 ‘That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched – this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it.’  (1John 1.1, 2) 

 If we want knowledge of God then we will surely find it in the person of Jesus Christ.  But we need to look.  God’s promise is this: ‘You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.’ (Jeremiah 29.12). As in all games of hide and seek the real joy, for both sides, comes in the finding.