Elizabeth has been very into playing hide and seek recently. When she wanted to play with my dad recently, he tried to explain to her that she couldn’t tell him where she was hiding, she couldn’t hide in super obvious spots, and she couldn’t make audible noise signaling where she was while she was hiding. None of this registered. I had to explain: to Elizabeth, the joy of the game was in being found, and then getting to run gleefully away while she is pursued by her finder.
And I think maybe that’s actually the game all of us really want to play. When we go to hide, even if it’s because we did something we are ashamed of or that we don’t want seen, deep down aren’t we hoping that someone we love is looking high and low for us, will chase us down and will tell us there was never any reason to hide? I think about Adam and Eve hiding from God in the Garden of Eden. If you’re really trying to hide from an omnipotent God, do you really think “amongst the garden trees” is going to do the trick? Probably not. But maybe that’s the point. Maybe there’s part of us that doesn’t want to face consequences when we sin, but there’s a bigger part of us that hopes if we stand Bugs Bunny-style behind a flimsy tree and rattle the branches, He’ll “find” us in our naked state.
Picking fruit is dangerous business.