(This reflection is taken from the Creighton University website which offers daily homilies based upon the lectionary readings.)
I feel rather certain that most of you played the game called “Hide and Seek” when you were a child. Which role did you enjoy more? Did you enjoy hiding, holding your breath and staying very still as you crouched behind a bush or in a closet? Or perhaps you enjoyed being the seeker, the person tasked with finding those who were hiding.
Sadly, as adults we may have started playing a similar game with God. We tend to take after our spiritual ancestors who hid in the Garden after they had eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They focused on their shame and their nakedness and hid in the darkest and most overgrown part of the garden in the hopes that God would not find them. However, God did find them. Nothing can stay hidden from God.
In today’s first reading, the prophet Hosea tells the sinful children of Israel that it is time to seek the Lord till he come and rain down justice upon them. We take up his refrain and use it to respond to Psalm 105. Seek the face of the Lord. Rejoice, O hearts that seek the Lord.
In the Gospel, Jesus dispatches the Twelve to go and find the lost sheep of Israel. Once they have found them, they are to proclaim that the Kingdom of God is at hand, sharing the glad tidings that God has found them and is about to lift them up from their dark hiding places.
We are reminded through the Scriptures today that we should keep searching for the Lord in our lives. This is supposed to be fun. As kids, we knew that each time we heard the seeker start to count to one hundred while we scattered for our favorite hiding spots. As adults, we may need to be reminded of that. Keep the game going! Don’t sit this one out. And certainly don’t play small, crouching in some deceptively cozy hiding spot away from God’s loving gaze.
The best part of it all: when we seek, God wants to be found!
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator