“We need to find out how much you weigh before the doctor comes in,” said the nurse. I’m always reluctant because when I stand on their scales, the digits on the LED screen won’t be truthful. My shoes, socks, underwear, pants, and belt all the way up to my shirt keep my real weight from being exposed. But when I’m home, I stand on the bathroom scales to uncover my naked weight.

Oh, the stuff we hide behind besides our clothes and a mask we wear to protect ?-ourselves and others from Covid-19. Some folks hide behind church attendance. Others hide behind fear, like the angst of opening up to others and God about a painful memory that happened to them years ago.

From Unseen, author Sara Hagerty writes, “There are two stories in a person-the visible story and the invisible story.”

God doesn’t want us to hide from Him, but in Him.

Why should you, or why should I hide in God? For starters, not being able to see the future is enough reason. Didn’t 2020 teach us that? When a woman by the name of Fanny Crosby was alive, she couldn’t see three feet in front of her, much less the future. As a blind person, since she was six weeks old, Fanny faced many insecurities. However, she saw the face of God in her heart.

But didn’t she want God to remove her blindness? “It seemed intended by the blessed providence of God that I should be blind all my life, and I thank Him for the dispensation. If perfect earthly sight were offered me tomorrow I would not accept it. I might not have sung hymns to the praise of God if I had been distracted by the beautiful and interesting things about me.” https://fewox.wordpress.com/2016/11/25/story-behind-the-song-he-hideth-my-soul/

In 1890, she wrote the hymn, He Hideth My Soul.

So how do you hide in God? Hagerty continues, “God never intended for us to hide from Him, to live with parts of us untouchable to Him. It’s in those naked-place moments-the times we allow ourselves to be exposed before God-that He covers us with Himself, blankets us in His safe love, and replaces our exposed weakness with His strength.”

God doesn’t want us to hide from Him, but in Him.

Every time I take our Labrador retrievers for a ride, they hang out the backseat windows and lean into the wind. To hide in God means to lean into Him and not resist what He’s allowed in your life. Thank Him for the cards you were dealt. Secondly, ask God to teach you as you walk through it-by faith and not by sight. (2 Corinthians 5:7)

What does Jesus want? Hagerty sums it up, “He is the one whose callused, earth-stained fingers gently hold the tender parts of my heart, the raw and bleeding parts of me. He is the one who loves for me to be exposed before Him, leaning in.” Why not expose yourself to the living God?

video of me “hiding” behind a hymnbook singing…

pictures courtesy of “Nelson & his Nikon”