Word for Wednesday... Hidden
For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, nor is anything secret that will not become known and come to light.
Luke 8:17
So far this winter we’ve been fortunate enough to have had three “snow events,” with the remote possibility of a fourth this coming weekend. Although none of these resulted in significant accumulation, they provided enough snow to do what snow does best, make everything outside look nice and clean and pretty. On three separate occasions I was able to forget how terrible my yard looks and how many weeds I have in my flowerbed. Unfortunately, when the snow melted I was brought back to reality, but there were some places where the snow did not melt, at least not immediately. In several seemingly random locations--the ditch alongside a roadway, a patch of lawn on the north side of the house, and a small area at the base of a tree--the snow hung around for days, and in some cases more than a week, long after the “snow event” was past us. The truth is, there wasn’t anything random about what I experienced; these were places where the ground stayed colder, where the wind blew stronger, and where the sun was less familiar. In these locations the snow proved it was not only a concealer, but a revealer of the coldest and darkest places.
Like these places where the snow lingers, we have deep recesses in our hearts, secret spaces where feelings like greed, bitterness, lust, jealousy, fear and anger have taken up residence. They are hidden in plain sight. We know how to cover them up, to conceal them with a façade of put-togetherness. We have been trying to fool other people for so long (and God too) we have almost fooled ourselves into believing they are non-existent. But deep down we know the truth, and God knows it too. As Jesus expressed in the passage quoted above, a day is coming when our whole selves will be exposed to the full light of day; hiding, deceiving, and concealing will no longer be a possibility. But by the grace of God, we don’t have to live in fear of that certain eventuality, we can be honest with God today. We can confess our sins to him and discover that not only does he already know all about them, he loves us anyway. He wants to cleanse and purify our hearts, fill us with his Holy Spirit and lead us on a journey of becoming like his Son, Jesus.
