O give thanks unto the LORD; call upon his name: make known his deeds among the people. Sing unto him, sing psalms unto him: talk ye of all his wondrous works. Glory ye in his holy name: let the heart of them rejoice that seek the LORD. Seek the LORD, and his strength: seek his face evermore.
Psalm 105:1-4
All of us remember playing hide and seek when we were children. Those of us who are parents and grandparents have a different experience playing that game. When we “hide” from the little ones it is usually in someplace fairly obvious so we can see the joy they experience at “finding” us. God treats us in the same way. He does not go off to a distant place where He cannot be found. Instead, He seeks for us, staying close so that we can find Him. In his sermon on Mars’ Hill in Athens Paul said, “That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:”
The issue in finding God is not that He is hard to find, but that our hearts are prone to wander and seek other things instead of Him. The first of the Ten Commandments, and the one that Jesus identified as the most important one, is that we are to put nothing ahead of Him, but instead to love Him supremely. If our hearts are in the right place, our response will follow. David wrote, “When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek” (Psalm 27:8).
In the busyness of life, we sometimes lose sight of our utter dependence on God and our urgent need for Him. We can try to fill the empty places with substitutes, but nothing can take His place. Striving to be close to Him—confessing and forsaking sin, walking in obedience and loving others—should be our priority, not just once in a while or when we are in trouble, but every day of our lives.
