Lent I

Lent I A—You are my hiding place


When I was a very little kid, I craved a spot all my own to play. A very farm-like spot was on the hay elevator—that long piece of equipment that would extend up into the hay loft to carry bales of hay from the wagon after they had been baled, where others would stack them. The elevator was one of the only places you could go to see from above, since our farm was on very flat ground and there were no good climbing trees around our house. The elevator was also just outside the barn area where my dad milked cows. He always turned on the radio while milking because he said the music calmed the cows.

So I would go sit on the elevator, look around at the fields and sky, and play radio. It was a time of feeling invisible, above the ground, and in my own space. I imagine many of us had these spots as children—maybe a play space or outdoor spot that felt like our very own--a place of safety and getting away from adults for a while.

As a child, I also had a hiding place for a different purpose. This was the need to feel invisible when mom and dad had arguments, or when I had done something I wasn’t supposed to. I recall the time I was doing flips over the back of the couch and my feet came crashing down on the glass coffee table and fish bowl, sending glass and water and fish everywhere. Poor fish. It was the longest ten minutes of my life waiting until my mom drove in the driveway that afternoon.

We also crave these hiding spaces as adults. We need a place where we can go to have some quiet time, away from the tax forms, bills and checkbooks, from teachers’ notes and children’s questions, from household chores and leaking faucets; away from the day we had at work or at school, the worries about getting it all done. And we also need the safe spaces to go to when we do something wrong—the time we pushed a send button on an email, when we immediately regretted sending it. The moments in the boss’s office when we know we have been called in about that thing we did or did not do, a place to deal with our guilt and shame and need for forgiveness, to lick our wounds, to maybe feel a little sorry for ourselves, or just grieve whatever our lack has been that day.

Hiding places are what lent can be about, where God can attend us and we can find God.

The hiding place on the hay elevator is one of joy and rejoicing, of playfulness and getting in touch with the child within us—the hobby, the music, the reading we do that helps us refresh ourselves. Finding this kind of hiding place is finding God in Sabbath. We are required to keep the Sabbath in the ten commandments. It is not just something nice we do for ourselves, it is a place where we go to do some soul-making. It is not just a time to refresh ourselves because we are tired and need energy to keep going. It is necessary for us to have a relationship with God.

The second kind of hiding place, of guilt, regret and shame, is like the place Adam and Eve went to be after they had eaten of the tree that was forbidden to them. It is then they discover they are naked and have shame. It is a place away from comfort and forgiveness. Sometimes it can be a place of depression and despair. But it can also be a wilderness place where our eyes are opened and we discover our nakedness and our need for God’s forgiveness.

Both places of hiding, our place of Sabbath and our place of wilderness are what the psalmist speaks about when writing that God: “You are my hiding place. You preserve from trouble; you surround me with shouts of deliverance.”

Jesus goes to the wilderness entering a hiding place. In this wilderness place, he meets tests about the command over creation and the laws of nature, and worldly powers. Like the Israelites in the wilderness forty years, Jesus’s forty days had challenges. But unlike the Israelites, who moaned about food, water and their leaders, Jesus passes his test, and is waited upon by angels. In the wilderness, Jesus finds the spirit of God’s care for him.

This story of Jesus’ testing in the wilderness reminds us that we will be tested. Finding Sabbath in our wilderness experiences is a challenge that is especially appropriate for us to work on during Lent. When we can take the tests that life gives us, like shattering glass and sending water and fish everywhere, and stand up to ask forgiveness, we know we are close to the love of God. When we can find that place where there is rest, then our souls can find rest in God.

Our hiding place is in God. This hiding place is one of love and compassion for all who seek it. It is a place where you can look over the scenery and get your bearings, get a better sense of things that may not make a lot of sense. It’s place to let your hearts sing and enter playful places that breathe life into our soul and into our relationship with God and with others. When we are being nibbled to death by ducks during the day, we go to God’s hiding place.

As we enter Lent, I invite you to ponder for yourself where your hiding place with God is.

Where do you go to pray,

to listen to music,

to play,

to quiet your mind so you can hear your heart beat?

During this Lent, I invite you to find those places in your life and heart where you can hide in God. Go there for respite, for refreshment, for forgiveness. Go there to find God and God’s care for you.

During this Lent, may we all be able to say: “O God, you are my hiding-place.”