I can see you!

I think I might have told you once or twice before about our cute little grandson Zain. Well, okay … maybe a few times more! One thing he loves to do at the moment is to find an interesting little space behind or under some item of furniture and quickly ‘hide’ there. It could be in between our piano and the piano stool in our lounge, for example, or perhaps under the desk in his granddad’s study. Either place, he is hardly invisible—he just thinks he is. If he can’t see me, he has obviously decided, then chances are we can’t see him! But I join in with his little game anyway.

‘Where could Zain be?’ I wonder out loud as he stays very still and quiet where he is.

‘I can see you!’ I say after a while in a teasing voice. The next moment, he appears, his little head to one side, eyes gleaming with mischief and a cheeky grin on his face.

‘There you are!’ I exclaim, to his delight. ‘You’re such a tricky boy!’

You know, sometimes I wonder if God isn’t tempted to laugh out loud at times at our bumbling efforts to deceive ourselves and hide from him as Zain does with us. It’s exactly what Adam and Eve tried to do back in the very beginning after they had disobeyed God and eaten from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The almighty Creator of the whole world surely knew where they were hiding and what had happened. Yet God calls out to them ‘Where are you?’, as if willing them to come and be up front about it all, but they choose to hide in fear (Gen 3).

Later, in Genesis 16:13, we read how the Lord finds Hagar after she has run away from her mistress Sarai. Hagar proceeds to give the Lord a simple, unique title—‘You are the God who sees me’.  And in Psalm 139:11-12, as King David realises there is no place where he can flee from God’s presence, he exclaims almost with an air of relief:

If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,” even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.

By the power given to him by his Father in heaven, Jesus understood what was in men’s and women’s hearts without having to be told. ‘I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you’, he says to Nathanael, Philip’s brother (Jn 1:48). He was well aware of the type of life the Samaritan woman at the well had led without her having to enlighten him (Jn 4). And in the same way today, God sees into our hearts, bringing to light the things we still try to hide at times.

I’m so thankful God doesn’t laugh at me and the foolish games I play. I’m so glad that instead, God treats me with such love and forbearance, forgiving me and patiently setting me feet on the right path, ready to do better next time.

I’m known. I’m seen. I can’t hide from God. And that brings me deep joy and true freedom.

How about you?

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The greatest communication revolution ever

This is my fiftieth blog since beginning my blogging adventure almost a year ago now – and what an interesting journey it has been!  I have reconnected with various friends and acquaintances from the past as a result of these writing efforts of mine, and have also made several new friends who have bothered to write a comment on my blog.  Truly today we live in an unprecedented age of opportunity in the area of communication.

This is brought home to me every time I make or answer a call via skype on my laptop.  One minute I can be sitting writing merrily away and the next talking to my friend in Turkey and seeing her as well across the thousands of kilometres that separate us.  And we can chat and encourage each other for however long we like – after all, it’s free!  The same goes for a writer friend in Tasmania, who has in turn linked me up with various other writers across the world via the International Christian Fiction Writers blog and also the American Christian Fiction Writers website and email digests. The possibilities are endless.

And then there is Facebook and other similar online social networks, which, despite the difficulties these might cause, are nevertheless amazing ways of keeping in contact with and finding both new and old ‘friends’.  Each week, I link my current blog to Facebook, which provides me with a much wider readership than would otherwise be possible. And when the time comes, I can also let any number of people know in a second with one flick of my finger that my latest novel is released.  I can even upload in image of the cover as well – amazing stuff.

With all this ease of communication, however, why is it that many of us seem to ignore the ability we all have to talk with God whenever and wherever?  Forget the mobile phones or emails or blogs – God is everywhere and ever listening, always wanting to communicate with us.  That was the idea way back in the Garden of Eden, before Adam and Eve heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day and hid among the trees (Genesis 3:8).  They didn’t want to talk about what they had done – and I guess we’re not much different today.  How much we all need to step out from our hiding place of fear and shame and rebellion and into the presence of our loving God, who is good and gracious and compassionate and longs to speak to us on a daily basis!

I want to be in a place where God and I are communicating constantly, with no barriers or ‘static’ between us.  I want to be one of those ‘sheep’ Jesus talks about in John 10:27-28 who easily recognise his voice, listen intently and follow him. ‘My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.  I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand’, Jesus says.  Through Jesus, the gap was bridged and our whole relationship with God was restored, so that we can communicate freely again.  And that would have to be the best ‘communication revolution’ ever, eclipsing email, blogs, Facebook, the lot – don’t you agree?

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