Spotlight Tag

Proverbs 15
3 The eyes of the Lord are in every place,
Watching the evil and the good.

During the summer when I was a kid, we’d play spotlight tag. All the kids who lived in our little corner of Corinne Bottom would meet up at the basketball goal by the Shifflette’s house. We’d scrounge up a flashlight, and the game was on. You could hide in yards, under cars, in trees. We were hard core. The secret of a good hiding spot for me was picking a small place kind of out in the open and stay absolutely motionless. Other kids would hide in normal kind of hiding spots. I’d hide beside a porch or by a bush by a house and no one could find me.

The point of spotlight tag was to avoid the light. If you get caught in the light, well, that’s it, you’re done, game over, you’re now it. And nobody wants to be it. Being it is the worst. So, you find a dark spot, and you keep quiet. After a while, your eyes get used to the dark; you become accustomed to it.

I think we still play this game, or try to play it with God. We don’t want the light to shine on us. It’s too bright, people might see where we’ve been in the dark. We try to convince ourselves otherwise, but you can’t really hide from God. Adam and Eve tried it and God found them. I believe it was King David who said that even if he went to the pits of hell to hide the Lord would find him there.

You see, we tend to think the Lord wants to put the light on us to put us on the spot, to shame us, to drag us kicking and screaming into the light so that our dark deeds will be revealed. But for God, it’s not a game of spotlight tag. He doesn’t want you to be it. He wants to set us free. He sent his Son, not to judge us or shame us, but to be it for us. The eyes of God see all men, good and evil. He seeks them out, not to expose their hiding spots, but to free them from a live of hiding and cowering in the shadows.  He offers a new chance.