Hiding out in the church...

When I was in youth group, I loved playing hide and seek in the church. The church i grew up in was a giant 5 story building that was built in the 1800's and had secret rooms and compartments all over the place, so it was super fun to find great places to hide.

My friends, Jason and Jim-Bob and I were hiding one day and we decided to hide out in the attic above the highest story of the church. This was great fun, except that Jim-Bob was a giant... he was about 6-5 and weighed around 300lbs. SO after much pushing and pulling we managed to get him up into the little trap door for the attic, and crawl up ourselves. The space in the attic was tight and the air was very still. We could hear everyone looking for us for a long time... eventually we heard them right below us...

My heart raced when I heard someone say, "I bet they are up in the attic!"

Thinking quickly, I jumped onto the trap door, and pulled Jim-Bob onto it as well. When the seekers tried to open it, it would not budge... our combined weight of 480+ pounds was not going anywhere.

"It must be locked, so they can't be up there" was what we heard from below.

We had done it... we had escaped capture in the church... We had hidden out, and even though people had a vague idea that we must be there, they were unable to get through our clever hiding ploy. As it turned out, they looked for us for almost an hour, then gave up and went on playing a new round...

I think this is a great metaphor for what happens in church all the time...

People come into the building, but because of their own fears, they put on masks and hide. At first, the church tries to "find" these people, but quickly bore of the effort and give up. So for so many people, they remain visible in the church, but their true suffering and pain is masked and hidden. They are hiding in plain sight, but everyone is moving to quickly to notice. It is like they are inches away physically, but there are entire areas of their life that no one knows about and no one care about...

This is a tragedy.

Are you hiding out in the church?

Are your friends Hiding out?

Often the people we think we know, might have deep pain that they are dying to share with someone, but no one has time to "look for them"