It’s in there.

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After we’ve bought a certain kind of car, we feel a camaraderie with matching cars on the road. Although I’ve never owned a Toyota before, now my eyes land on them, particularly Highlanders. “What a handsome vehicle,” my brain tells me. But before my purchase, I’d never heard of them.

The other day I pulled up behind a Highlander at a red light. I was admiring its silvery color when I noticed something interesting about the Toyota insignia. The letters T-O-Y-O-T-A are all present in that one symbol. And  suddenly it made perfect sense. The loopy design I used to think resembled a man in a cowboy hat was just a clever way to embed the company name into their emblem.

Before the stop light turned green, God put an interesting thought into my head. He, too, is hidden in a similar way, not the letters of his name but his touch, his influence and his wisdom, embedded in the world around us.

I think of God every time I see a flower with five perfectly arranged petals instead of six. It would have been easier to make it symmetrical. I see him hidden in the endlessness of outer space as the Hubble continues to travel and show us more of the heavens. Mankind thinks we’ll eventually see the end of it, but my guess is there is none.

God is hidden in the conception of a baby. With fertilization comes the full potential of a complicated human being. The invisible DNA, present from the first cell division, is so unique it can be trusted to finger a criminal and send him to prison.

The Lord has also hidden himself in the circumstances that come into people’s lives. Our family “saw” him again and again during the 42 days of Nate’s cancer as coincidences became too numerous to be happenstance. He is also hidden in the unexplainable phenomenon of changed lives, of radical turn-arounds that defy logic and probabilities.

God is hidden, yet he calls to us. “Come and find me!” And he intends to let us discover him. This invitation is, of course, the opposite of our M.O. We try to hide things from God, hoping he’ll never ask about them. It might be a deed we’re not proud of or a secret sin we don’t want to stop. It might be a way of thinking we know is wrong.

How ridiculous to think we can hide anything from the Almighty. He has the ability to see beyond x-ray vision right into our thoughts. Nothing can be hidden from him. We would do well to follow his example by telling him, “Come and find me.” But we should also add something he never has to say to us: “I’ll keep no secrets from you.”

“ ‘Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him?’ declares the Lord. ‘Do not I fill heaven and earth?’ declares the Lord.” (Jeremiah 23:24)

13 thoughts on “It’s in there.”

  1. Great post! We are thinking of you so much today on your birthday, and praying for you. We love you and can’t wait to see you!

  2. Happy Birthday, Dear Margaret, Happy Birthday to you. More on a phone call, tonight.

  3. Happy Birthday, Margaret… God was good…
    Quite the observation in the Toyota emblem.
    Most of nature, music, the human body, etc, involves numbers in the Fibonacci sequence- let’s test your math skills on your birthday- here’s the sequence: 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34…..
    Thus the 5 petal flowers and a whole host of other things. So, what’s the pattern?
    You can be assured you were fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together, 1 pearl, 2 pearl, 3 pearl, 5 pearl, 8 pearl… 🙂 on this day just a few years ago.
    Much love to you,
    Terry

  6. Happy Birthday, Margaret. You were born on the same day as my mother Marie who is smiling down from
    heaven at 106 years young today. You are both wonderful spirits and heaven sent. Mother never counted her years after 40-thats why she lived to be 100.

  7. Thinking of you much today in church at home, in the songs we sang. Happy Birthday. God’s emblem is so evident inyour life. Thanks for this blog.

  9. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, Margaret! You share the birthday of my paternal grandmother and one of my nieces. How thankful we all are that 60+ years ago God sent you into the world to accomplish His plans and purposes through you.

    From Psalm 25:4-6, a prayer for the coming year: “Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths; Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long. Remember, O Lord, your great mercy and love, for they are from of old.” XO

  10. Belated Happy Birthday to you, Margaret! May God pour out His rich blessings on you this year until you overflow! You’ve allowed Him to pour out His goodness into our lives through your testimony this last year. Won’t it be amazing to all be together one day in Heaven and get to see just how far the ripples of these outpourings spread and all they accomplished?

  11. The parables are another example of God’s hidden messages–for those who have the heart to see. At church we are doing a summer series on some of them and John and I are reading in Matthew. It is amazing how Jesus told these stories that were so simple and powerfully profound yet so many remain clueless. What an amazing God we serve.

  12. “The Lord bless you and keep you” on your birthday and throughout your coming year! Isn’t it amazing that Jesus said: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children” Mat.11:25

  13. “The Lord bless you and keep you” on your birthday and throughout your coming year! Isn’t it amazing that Jesus said: “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children” Mat.11:25