The Hiding Place

They were naked.

And they felt no shame.

There was nothing to hide.
There was no need to seem like something.
There was no fear of being seen.

Then something changed.

They realized they were naked.
They made coverings for themselves.
Then they heard the voice of the Lord.
And they hid.

When the Lord called the man, an answer came:

“I heard your steps in the garden and I was afraid, because I was naked; so I hid.”

Perhaps these words deserve to be heard slowly.

Fear.
Nakedness.
Hiding.

The man who was naked and felt no shame is still naked now, but he is afraid of being seen.

So he looks for a covering.
And he looks for a hiding place.

But God asks:

“Where are you?”

It does not seem to be only a question about location.

The man was right there.
Hidden among the trees.

Perhaps the question runs through all of human history:

Where are you?

---

Naked before him

Since then we have learned many ways to cover ourselves.

Not only with clothes.

We can cover ourselves with knowledge.
With religion.
With good works.
With reputation.
With explanations.
With what others think of us.
And even with what we think of ourselves.

We carefully build the person we want to present.

But there is a difficulty:

before God we are still naked.

It is written that nothing in all creation is hidden from his eyes.

Everything is uncovered.
Everything is exposed.

Perhaps, then, the question was never about managing to hide something from God.

Perhaps it is about losing the fear of being seen by him.

---

No condemnation

And why would anyone leave the hiding place?

Perhaps only when they are no longer afraid of the one who is looking for them.

It is written:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

This changes everything.

Because the one who looks for me is not looking for someone who managed to become presentable.

He came to seek:

the lost.

Perhaps we can come before him exactly like that.

Without argument.
Without defense.
Without leaves.
Without a character to play.

Like a child.

Jesus said that whoever does not receive the Kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.

A child may not yet have learned all our ways of hiding.

She simply comes.

---

Another hiding place

But then something surprising happens.

Scripture does not leave us without a hiding place.

It presents us with another hiding place.

The psalmist says:

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High and rests in the shadow of the Almighty…”

Now someone is still hidden.

But everything has changed.

Before, the man hid from God.
Now he hides in God.

Before there was fear.
Now there is rest.

Before, the trees were used to keep God from seeing him.
Now the Most High himself is the hiding place.

Perhaps we were never called to live without shelter.

Perhaps we were only looking for shelter in the wrong place.

---

Hidden with Christ

Paul takes this image even further:

“For you died, and now your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

It is not just:

hide yourselves in God.

It is:

your life is hidden with Christ in God.

Perhaps it is hard to imagine greater security.

With Christ.
In God.

Then we can understand something that seems contradictory:

we can be completely naked before God and completely hidden in God.

Naked, because we have nothing to hide.
Hidden, because in him we find shelter.

Known, but not condemned.
Found, though we were lost.

---

Where are you?

Perhaps the question from the garden keeps echoing:

“Where are you?”

Not:

What have you done?
How did you end up there?
Why aren't you better?

But:

Where are you?

Perhaps we are still behind the trees.
Perhaps we are still sewing leaves.
Perhaps we are still trying to build a version of ourselves that can appear before him.

But the one who seeks the lost keeps calling.

And perhaps we can finally come out.

Not because we managed to cover ourselves well enough.

But because we discovered that we no longer need to hide from him.

There is another hiding place.

“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High…”

And there something happens that did not happen among the trees of the garden.

There we can rest.

---

Perhaps the path is simply this:

from hiding from God
to hiding in God.

From fear to rest.
From shame to trust.
From leaves to shelter.
From being lost to being found.

And then we can stand before him without fear.

Naked, but not exposed.
Known, but not condemned.
Hidden, but not lost.

Because our life is:

hidden with Christ in God.