favorite childhood memory of mine is playing a massive game of hide and seek. About once a summer fifteen to twenty of the neighborhood kids would have a game of hide and seek.

The boundaries were from corner to corner, both sides of the street with alleys and backyards being in bounds. Home base was the telephone in the middle of the block in front of Mikey and Jimmy Clarks house.  The first one found would be the next seeker.  Once hid you could not move unless you were making a sprint to home base.  Personally, I don’t recall ever making that dash because my goal was to be the last one found.  My ultimate goal was to find a hiding place so good that seeker would give up looking for you and all the kids would call you in.

A couple of my better hiding places was climbing one of the trees on the block and hiding inside my parent’s car.  There was the time I climbed into a garbage can.  I had someone put the bag of garbage on top of me and slide the lid on the can.

Have you ever felt as though God went to such extremes to hide from you?

It may seem that God delights in playing hide and seek.  That God gets great pleasure in watching humanity squirm in our despair.  How else can you explain why God allows people who despise or deny Him to amass great wealth?  How else do you account for wicked people prospering?

As you read Psalm 10 you have to wonder if things have changed much since then.  You also have to wonder if the Psalmist’s anger is because of the damage the wicked are doing to society or because he is jealous of their success.

What ever is happening isn’t good.  It is making the Psalmist feel exactly what Jesus felt on the cross and what you and I feel in the midst of a tragedy or crisis abandoned by God.

One of Dawn’s friends made a remark that called God into question. “If God is such a loving God why would He give that woman children?”

Let’s be truthful, like the Psalmist we have or have had real doubts about God’s love and concern for us.  Whether it is watching the atrocities shown during the nightly news.  Or listening to a list of prayer concerns that includes the death of a forty year old husband and father, a 2 ½ year old and 12 year with cancer, we wonder

What makes us feel this way?

I remember my sons had a series of books that had multiple endings.  As you were reading the book you came to a page that gave you a question, depending on how you answered determined what page in the book you would turn to next.  The neat thing about the book is that if you didn’t like the way story was turning out, you could go back to the page with the original question change your answer and go to a different page for a different ending.

The result is that our honest doubts often cause us to stop praying and conclude that God no longer cared.  How unlike the Psalmist.  The Psalmist had honest doubts but he kept praying.

He persisted in telling God about his situation and troubles and he concluded that God cared.

What seems to be real is not always the case.  In the hour of our greatest need, God is not riding high on some lofty clouds, playing a game of hide and seek, leaving us to languish in our despair.  Instead God comes to us to empower us. While removing our problem maybe what is important to us.  What is important to God is not showing His power to release us from pain, but to reveal His persistence to endure pain and suffering with us.

Let’s face it, if we could write our own script for our lives, we certainly would not include suffering, pain, disappointment, etc.  As scripture points out when God created humanity he did not include suffering, pain, disappointment. “God does not willingly grieve or afflict us.” (Lam. 3:33) All of this is a result and consequences of sin.

God uses these hardships.  Hardship is to the soul what physical therapy is to the body.  It is painful but absolutely essential if we want full health physically and spiritually.  When I was rehabbing my knee because I tore a cartilage the last thing I wanted was the pain of the therapist bending my knee.  Yet I trusted the therapist and the exercise regime.  The result of my trust is a healthy knee.

We must trust God to use the pain of every storm, every dark night, every tragedy, every sickness, to develop our soul, so that no matter how dark the valley we must go through we need do not have be afraid because God is with us.  God promises to be with us when we walk through the dark valleys of life. (See Psalm 23) God promises to be our refuge and our strength. (See Psalm 46) God promise never to leave us orphaned. (John 14.18)

“Trust in the Lord with all of your heart,
and lean not on your own understanding.”
(Pro. 3:5,6)