BEING FOUND

"Being found is only a matter of turning around."

BEING FOUND

Lost in a world too big for my brain
I've fallen and broken every link in the chain
Freedom is calling - I hear the sweet sound
Encouraging me back into the light of life

J7

Sent: Mon, Jun 21, 2010 1:11 am
Subject: [Slice 2227] The Hidden

The Hidden

I am of the mindset that Sunday afternoons are meant for wandering.  At least for me it is a hallowed task.  There seems nothing more appropriate on the first day of the week than exploring for the sake of exploration, and I am content to do so by car or on foot, in a busy mall or in my mind.  On Sunday, the journey is not the means but the end—and it changes my perspective completely.

One Sunday on my way home from church something different caught my eye, though it was on a road I use daily.  It was a small cemetery, contained by a fence that was deteriorating, and concealed by a tiny forest spared by contractors.

The cemetery was old; the grave stones were toppled or badly weathered, some dating as far back as the 1800's.  The place seemed like it had been forgotten—or perhaps like someone was hoping it would be forgotten.  It was a lost plot of history hidden inconspicuously between large hotels and office buildings.

Christian theologians speak both of the omnipresent character of God and of humanity's attempts to hide, and it was these attributes that struck me as I walked among the stones of this hidden cemetery.  "He is Lord of both the dead and the living," writes the apostle. 

For God there is no forgotten grave or child lost; there is no place we can flee from his presence.  Whether we are running from his voice or crying out from the depths, our frames are never hidden from the one who formed them. 

It was a striking contrast:  I had driven past this cemetery a thousand times and never seen it.  But God knew each one buried there by name. Yet as I walked away, I was seized by the thought that my oversight was not accidental.  It was a plot of land that had been concealed on purpose and then hidden by my own expectation of what belonged there.  Contractor, consumer, or neighbor—we don't want to see cemeteries beside our hotels, gravestones beside our office parking lots, or as we stand in line for lunch.  The cemetery was "lost" because we had hidden it from ourselves.  It was forgotten by our own doing.

I wonder how often I behave similarly with life, drawing fences around questions that haunt or convictions I don't want to see, hiding sin or sorrow until it is forgotten.  How often am I the cause of my own blindness, the hands that work to conceal the thing I need most to see?  The human way is one so easily misled by our own distractions, lost by our own intentions—while our truest thoughts are like hidden cemeteries in the great worlds we build for ourselves.  For centuries, God has been calling us out of these hidden worlds and lost ways. 

Since Eden, God has been positing the question to people hiding behind trees. "Where are you?"  As with Adam, it is not for God's sake that God inquires—it is you and I who need to be asked.  The Father knows precisely where we are, and yet the Father seeks the lost, longing to gather them unto Himself like a hen gathers her chicks.  To those who are hiding from themselves and from Him, God calls them to love with all their hearts, souls, and minds.  To those who have forgotten, God urges them to remember.  To those who do not see, God moves them to sight.  And to those who are lost, the Father sends the Son to save.  "For the Son of Man was sent to seek and to save what was lost" (Luke 19:10).  

Our inability to flee from the presence of God is not a diminishment of humanity, but a promise of God's faithfulness. "'Am I only a God nearby,' declares the LORD, 'and not a God far away?  Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?' declares the LORD. 'Do I not fill heaven and earth?'" (Jeremiah 23:23-24).  However disoriented or distanced from the Father we have become, it is not far for the one who longs to save.  However lost we have managed to make ourselves, the Son has already found us.  However thorough our attempts to hide or great the distance we have run, it is nothing to the one who never lets us out of his sight.  Being found is only a matter of turning around.

Jill Carattini is managing editor of A Slice of Infinity at Ravi Zacharias
International Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.