where are you?

Where Are You?

‘Where are you?’
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. Then the Lord God called to Adam and said to him, “Where are you?”So he said, “I heard Your voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; and I hid myself.”
And so we hide…
And we’ve been hiding since then.
I’ve often asked myself if God were to unveil the real me, would people like what they see? Would I still be popular? Accepted? Would I still have family and friends? Would you?
We all hide. Some of us hide because of sin; we don’t want to be identified by our wrongdoings. Others hide because of shame, we feel we don’t measure up and would like to be someone else. Some of us are so scarred, we can’t help but hide. All of us hide because of fear; we are afraid of the consequences of our sins, our shame, our scars and our secrets.
One of my very first impressions of Lagos was the people here – how beneath the polished veneer everyone was aching for real friendships, but no one looked like they cared. Lagos people (to my mind) had perfected the “don’t you dare come near enough to say hello” look. The look was scary, but if you were brave enough to persist and delve in, you would find another lonely scarred person, crying out for companionship, for love and for healing.
What gets us from here to there? I mean who transformed me from the starry-eyed, hopeful , happy little girl who believed in romance, endless love and eternal friendships to this person who’s hiding somewhere; afraid to love, afraid to trust, afraid of life. What changed me? What changed you?
Life. The psalmist said in chapter 90 verse 10, ‘the years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty; yet their span is but toil and trouble; they are soon gone and we fly away.’  Our experiences change us; the blows life deals us and how we respond to them take us from here to there.
It’s like dressing up in winter – we put on layers and layers of clothes to keep the cold away. Let me explain it a bit more.
A boyfriend or girlfriend breaks your heart, so you vow not to fall in love so recklessly any more, that’s one layer put on.
Your friend has an affair with your husband, what a shocking betrayal; you vow never to have women friends anymore – there goes on another layer.
The organisation you’ve worked for all these years suddenly hires a younger, better, cheaper you and lays you off – you curse them every morning you get up, additional layers.
A business partner swindles you – pulls the comfy rug of the business you’ve both slaved to build, you are out in the cold, destitute, penniless. At least now you know – man or woman no one can be trusted!
Layers and layers and layers….
You are covered in layers till no one can find you anymore, your smile is gone, your laughter dead, your joy extinct. No one looking at you today can see the former smiling hopeful you filled with dreams of tomorrow. You’ve successfully hidden yourself in layers of hurt, pain and shame.
Jesus is walking in the garden and calling out to you – where are you?
Perhaps it’s time to unlayer ourselves – to peel away the familiar shield of fear that covers us and helps us cope albeit sub-optimally... Like Adam, we hide because we are afraid…, like Adam, perhaps it’s also time to say, “Lord, I am in hiding because I am afraid”. Perhaps it’s time to let God cover us with Himself, for in His presence is fullness of joy and all who hide in Him rejoice. And we really need that joy to dream again, believe again, forgive again, trust again, go back to here and start all over again.
Perhaps it’s time to let go and let God.
A friend once told me that when you shut your fingers (make a fist) nothing can come out of it, but you need to realize that nothing can go in either. That’s life. Embrace it or lose it. Stop hiding.
Stephen Curtis Chapman summed it up in his song:
‘It doesn’t matter who you are
It doesn’t matter where you’ve been
It doesn’t matter what the scar
It doesn’t matter what the sin
It doesn’t matter if you fell
Somewhere along the way
There is healing for your life today
There’s a river that flows
From the fountain of God
And it heals everything along the way
I have tasted and know
That for every broken heart
There is healing for your life today’

ID Ogufere – June 2013