Pigs don't usually inhabit houses. Even three-year-old Gemma knows that. I know it's not all that uncommon, but in all my sixty five years of living, I've only known one family to actually have a pet pig that they kept in the house. It didn't work out too well, but that's not my story to tell, so I'll leave it to Nate or Deb to satisfy your morbid curiosity.
This morning, little Gemma and I sat together on the kitchen floor, her portable doll house opened up and standing between us, I on its outside, Gemma on its inside. She had been playing quietly when I walked in. Her mother had come to pick up her and her brother and sister from their twice-monthly overnight stay, and she and Linda were chatting at the kitchen table while Gemma moved figures and furniture around, matching movement to imagination. Upon entering the room, I immediately looked for the pig. Somehow in months past, a little plastic pig had gotten mixed up with the ordinary inhabitants of the doll house, and it became a game between us; she played with the figures on the inside of the house while I tried to sneak the pig in through a door or window. She would catch me, telling me loudly that "pigs don't belong in the house!" Lately, the game has morphed into a kind of hide and seek. She closes her eyes tightly while I hide the pig somewhere in the dollhouse. She looks diligently till she finds it, squeals in delight, then makes me close my eyes while she proceeds to hide it.
I love to watch her thought processes developing. What to me is an incredibly simple task (finding a pig in an almost two-dimensional dollhouse) is for her a daunting accomplishment. She hasn't yet learned to make all the connections, to reason things out the way I do as an adult. Each time we play the game, it is a new challenge to her, with fresh difficulties. I don't ridicule her eager efforts; rather, I applaud her every move, and lead her through each room of the dollhouse till the pig is found. I suspect God looks at us much the way I see Gemma searching for that pig. What seems incredibly challenging to us is patently obvious to him, not only because he is the one who so to speak, hid the pig in the first place, but because his wisdom and knowledge is that much greater than our small and faltering ability to make sense of the dollhouse of life which lies open before us.
Gemma and I have played the same game in real life, with her hiding somewhere in the house, usually in a closet or behind a piece of furniture. The game starts when I start calling out, "Are you in the bathroom (or living room, or dining room...)?" To which question I always hear a tiny voice saying, "No." It is a typical child's game, but it occurs to me that for toddlers, hide and seek is only fun if they know someone is looking for them, and that they will be found. I am so grateful that in the hide and seek of life, Someone was looking for me, and found me. To be hiding while no one is looking eventually leads to discouragement and even fear. God is seeking, and hears that childlike cry of our hearts that lead him to us as he calls out asking, "Are you over there? Are you here?" and finally wraps us in his arms, delightedly laughing, "I found you!"
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