My Hiding Place

My Hiding Place

(“You are my hiding-place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.” Psalm 32:7)

Did you have a hiding place, somewhere no one knew about but you, when you were a young child? When I was in trouble, or when I was just fed up with the stress and strain of childhood, I usually wanted to run and hide. My place was in our garage.

An unattached building in the backyard with a driveway running alongside our house, our garage was filled with box after box of treasures to explore for a seven-year-old boy. But, along with the opportunity for exploration, the multitude of boxes made hiding a snap. I could burrow in between two or three boxes, lay a stray piece of cardboard over the top, and remain hidden for days. Of course, the longest I ever hid out was a couple of hours. A boy had to make sure he came back inside for supper, after all.

We carry the desire for protection well into adulthood; and for good reason. There are so many things in life that, if we allow them, have great power to frighten us. We soon discover that life isn’t laid out as neatly as we hoped. Unlike the wrinkleless and well-made bed Mom always made with perfect corners, life sometimes looks more like the way we left our bed during our single adult lives. Pillows strewn, sheets wadded and the bedspread eventually found halfway under the mattress.

And, though some of life’s changes are harmless, and our fear is simply the challenge of the unknown, there remain times when a hiding place serves our needs very well. David wrote these words with a history of depending on hiding places God provided…literally. When King Saul chased him down to kill him, David found protection in caves, from the High Priest, and even from the enemy Philistines.

In David’s mind these were not coincidental happenstance, nor the result of his own quick wit. No, God Himself had been the hiding place. Every “earthly” protection he received was God’s own provision. The beauty of the expression is that God “is” his hiding place. He does not simply “provide” a place to hide; God is that place!

As we learn that we can find protection in the center of God’s heart, we run away from our fears less often. It is like sitting in a theater with surround sound. You experience the music, thunder, the wash of rain and the breaking of waves on the beach from every vantage point. Beyond mere stereo that divides the sound into two channels; surround sound makes you feel you are in the middle of it all.

God wants us to know that as we trust Him, we are in the very center of His protective care. He draws a circumference of protection that is wider than the dangers we face. He hides us in the center of His heart, softening the sharpness of the crises we experience. He folds us up in the warmth of His love, reducing the spasms of fear, real and imagined.

It is a common human instinct to flee from trouble; in fact it is a basic instinct. But for those who have learned the Father’s love through Christ, the “fleeing” takes a different direction. We no longer merely run away, we run “to”. We run to our Father’s arms, who has promised us a place of safety.

And, for those who are truly honest, we want to put the greatest distance between ourselves and our own misdeeds, our own sins. We hope our darker side won’t be discovered, so we hide, only opening a portion of our soul to anyone. The same God who protects us in danger, also invites us to run to Him with our personal sin.

God does not want us to be on the run, either from outward danger, or from our own wrongdoing. He wants to cover over those sins with the only thing greater, His love and mercy. That love was shown in all the suffering and pain Jesus endured on the cross. There, in stark agony, the Savior faced down the entire sin of this world without blinking. There, for those who will accept it, every sin was forgiven once and for all, and every human on the planet is invited to hide in the strong love of God.

If Paul didn’t sing these words, he should have, for they are certainly a “song of deliverance”. “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:3-4) Hidden in Christ, we need hide our true selves from each other no longer.