Hide and Seek: The Game We Never Outgrew
The Seeker and the Hiders
Hide and Seek
There’s one childhood game we all loved: Hide and Go Seek. I don’t remember a single kid growing up who didn’t want to play. We love the anticipation that builds as we crouch in a dark closet or squeeze under a bed. We hold our breath as the seeker walks past. We feel the elation when they do. We did it! We achieved invisibility.
The earliest written account was by Julius Pollux, a Greek grammarian living in Egypt in the 2nd century AD. He called it apodidraskinda. And even though centuries have passed, the game is still played across the world. In Spain: el escondite. In France: jeu de cache-cache. In Israel: machboim. In South Korea: sumbaggoggil. In Romania: de-av-ati ascunselea. Football might be the most popular sport in the world, but nearly every kid has played hide and seek. It’s timeless. It’s transcultural.
So… what does that say about us?
Why do we hide?
The World Best
This is going to freak you out a bit. I’m going to nominate Tatsuko Horikawa1, 57, of Japan, as the best hide-and-seek player of all time. She hid in a home for an entire year without being found. Her hiding spot? A closet set high in the kitchen that looked more like a crawl space. The reason she was eventually found—sorry, caught—was that the man who owned the home noticed his food was disappearing. He set up a camera and caught her on video crawling out of her perch for her nightly routine. She had been homeless until she found his door unlocked. She lived under his roof for a full year without being detected.
Hiding is fun in a game. But as a life strategy? It’s terrible. Tatsuko hid to survive. Her mental illness kept her living in fear, always calculating her next step, always bracing for exposure. You can see this in the security footage of her emerging from her hiding place. She was a shadow—the absence of light. She was never really there. Her whole life was spent hiding.
You might not think so, but you’re playing a version of hide and seek every day. I don’t even have to explain the rules. Just answer this: How are you doing? Are you already darting into a hiding place?
Come out, come out, wherever you are!
You say, “I’m fine.” Really? Does “fine” describe the fight you and your spouse are having? Or does “fine” perfectly describe the anxiety that’s been bubbling under the surface all week? Or, maybe you had an awesome day… say that!
You might still believe you’re not hiding. So let me raise the stakes a bit:
How can I pray for you?
This is where your brain goes into full lockout mode. Synapses stop firing. You revert to a toddler hiding behind your parents’ legs. You forget your name. Seriously, try connecting a few dots. Picture me asking you—because I am, right now—How can I pray for you?
To Good of a Hidding Spot
When did this big game of hide and seek begin? At the beginning—literally. In Genesis 3, the instinct to hide is born out of original sin. After Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they did what we now consider natural: they hid. Behind some trees. Isn’t that just like a child? I bet your 6-year-old self would have found the same hiding spot.
We think we’re expert hiders—but we’re no match for God, the expert seeker.
This game was passed down to us by our first parents in paradise. After they ate the fruit, they “heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day…” [Ready or not, here HE comes!] …and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees. And God asked the question: “Where are you?”
What would you do if your child went missing?
In 2019, a 15-year-old named Fahim in the port city of Chittagong, Bangladesh, took hide and seek a little too far. The older you get, the better your hiding spots get—and the less likely you are to be found. Fahim decided to hide in a shipping container. That container was sealed and shipped 2,300 miles away to Malaysia. He was found six days later, dehydrated—but alive.
You better believe his parents yelled: “Where are you?!”
Where are you!?!
Are you still in the woods? Still hiding?
Sin has made us socially awkward. We can’t even tell the people who love us how we’re doing, much less expose our hearts to the living God. And sometimes we’re so deep in the woods we don’t even know we’re hiding anymore. Wake up, y’all! We’re trading honest community for life in a closet. What started as a small mistake has taken us thousands of miles from home.
Come out of hiding—while God still calls, “Where are you?”
Of course, God knows where you are hiding; however, you will never be forced out of hiding. Yet, Christian faith responds. And when we return, we enter into a relationship with God and with His people. As 2 Peter 3 says, “The Lord is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
Repentance is the step of faith.
We step out of hiding and into Jesus’ embrace.
You don’t have to hide anymore.
Come. Confess. He is seeking. Be found.
Pray with us.
Father, you see through every hiding place. We admit we’ve avoided you—dodging questions, masking pain, covering sin. But in Christ, we are not condemned—we are pursued in love. Lead us out of hiding and into your mercy. Amen.
Thanks for praying! God bless you. We’ll read and pray again next Saturday at 8:30 a.m.
Her name was not officially released, but many sources online cite her as Tatsuko Horikawa.
Great job