Day 31 Lost or hiding?
I was in a shop today just aimlessly dandering up and down the aisles when a grey haired lady walked past me saying ( loudly) ' Bella! Bella where are you?' She disappeared down another aisle and the voice got louder and a bit more panicky. She re-appeared at the bottom of the shop as I reached the end and she said ' Have you seen a little girl?' I said no I hadnt but Id keep my eyes open. She started to shout more loudly. By this time she was definitely in quite a state and everyone in the large store could hear her yelling ' Bella! Where are you? Bella!' I was about to join in the search when my eye just happened to notice a display stand wobble ever so slightly. I walked over to it and discovered Bella, on her hands and knees, very neatly hiding in between two large cardboard merchandise containers. I shouted that Id found her and then told her to come out of hiding, by which time her distraught adult had arrived and grabbed onto her for dear life all the time saying ' Dont ever do that again, I was so frightened, that wasnt funny' etc. It was strange. because the previous day in the cafe Id had a conversation with a couple of people about losing our kids in supermarkets. I dont think I ever lost any of my boys, but I definitely remember my brother regularly wandering off and Mum and I trailing up and down , up and down, trying to intercept him as he wandered alternate aisles from us.
This has got me thinking. The lovely Bella knew she wasn't lost. She was in the store where her adult was. She was hiding. But she knew where she was and had every confidence that her adult would find her. Which she did. From Bella's point of view she was hiding. Her adult however definitely thought Bella was lost. She wasnt where she was supposed to be. Im assuming the lady was Bella's grandmother. So she was someone with responsibility not only for Bellas safety, but also to her parents who had entrusted Bella to her care. Bella had disappeared in a large and busy store with automatic doors onto a busy main road. Im guessing Bella was 4 or 5. The panic in grandmas voice and face made it clear she thought Bella was lost. I was a bystander. I was pretty sure Bella was in the shop and would turn up soon enough. I didnt think Bella was lost. If she hadnt turned up when she did, and if she had stayed hidden for ten minutes longer I'd probably have started to think she was lost. But if a child disappears for a few minutes, in my mind they arent lost. They have simply wandered off.
psychologically disturbing. Hiding is something completely the opposite. When we are hiding we actually have super-knowledge of our whereabouts. We are depending on others not knowing the lie of the land as well as we do so we can remain undiscovered.
So..... two questions. Firstly, are you lost or hiding? You are not eternally and existentially lost because you know Jesus, but sometimes I think we can go through seasons where we wander off from Him and maybe we are only one aisle away from where He is but we cant quite connect back up with Him again. Or maybe we are hiding, like Adam and Eve. Maybe because of something we have done - something we havent done - fear of what God might ask us to do..........
Secondly - the people we are longing to see come to the Lord. Are they lost or are they hiding? I think the lost ones genuinely desperately want to be found. But the hiding ones dont want to be found. And until they do maybe its not really worth us trying to find them? Jesus came to seek and save the lost. Not the hiding. Its late at night and maybe my brain is fried so you can tell me if Im rambling nonsense. Whatever the case, Im glad Bella was reunited with her frantic Granny and that my kids are too cool to go shopping with their mother these days so Im not likely to have to dig them out from behind a stack of Monster Munch any time soon.😀
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