Recognizing the Hidden Lord
Rev. J.A. Reid
A preacher was an avid golfer. Every chance he got, he found himself on the golf course swinging away. It was an obsession. One Sunday was a picture perfect day for golfing. The sun was out, no clouds in the sky, and the temperature was just right. The preacher was in a quandary as to what to do, and shortly, the urge to play golf overcame him. He called an assistant to tell him that he was sick and could not do church, packed the car up, and drove three hours to a golf course where no one would recognize him. Happily, he began to play the course. An angel up above was watching the preacher and was quite perturbed. He went to God and said, “Look at the preacher. He should be punished for what he is doing.” God nodded in agreement. The preacher teed up on the first hole. He swung at the ball, and it sailed effortlessly through the air and landed right in the cup three hundred and fifty yards away, a picture perfect hole-in-one. He was amazed and excited. The angel was a little shocked. He turned to God and said, “Begging Your pardon, but I thought you were going to punish him?” God smiled. “Think about it – who can he tell?”
“No matter where we go or what we do God sees us but sometimes it’s hard to see God. We only see the impossible in life by recognizing the hidden Lord, and recognize Him by witnessing God in everything and discover Him within. The problem is many of us who claim to be following Jesus miss the Christ that can only be found within. If we don’t learn how to recognize the hidden Lord within we will go through life thinking and acting like we know God and miss Him.
An old man met a man coming from Detroit. They talked. The man from Detroit asked the old man, you are coming from Atlanta. Please tell me something about the people there: what manner of people are they, what are they like?” The old man asked the man, “First you tell me what type of people is there in Detroit.” The man said, “Very disgusting, nauseating, violent, quarrelsome.” And all these qualities flashed on the face of the man. The old man said, “I am sorry. You will find the people of Atlanta just the same.”
Later on, he met another man who was also from Detroit, and he also asked the same question: And the old man again asked, “First tell me what manner of men are there in Detroit and the man became aflame with nostalgia… a very loving memory of the people of Detroit. His face shone and he said, “Very pleasant, friendly, kind, and good neighbors.” The old man said, “I am happy to tell you that you will find the people of Atlanta just the same.” This story is beautiful. It tells a very basic truth about us: wherever we go, we will always find ourselves; wherever we look, we will always encounter ourselves. The whole world is nothing but a mirror, and all relationships are mirrors. Again and again we encounter ourselves – and again and again we misunderstand. We never realize the point, that it is our own face that we have looked at, that it is our own mood that we have come across. In life we meet no one but ourselves. God is hidden in these experiences because God is concealed our hearts! Our work in this life is to find Him.
There are two ways of recognizing the unseen Lord. One, we recognize the Hidden Lord in our life when we see ourselves in everything. We can recognize Jesus only if we have recognized something of the beyond in ourselves. We recognize Jesus only if a part of us has become like Jesus; otherwise we cannot recognize Him. We cannot recognize that which has not happened to us. If we are dark, only darkness can be recognized. If we are light, then we become capable of recognizing light. Our eyes can see light because they are part of the sun, because something within us has become the nature of light. A deep transformation has happened within you. We now are able to see the hidden Lord when we see God in all things.
Two, we recognize the Hidden Lord in our life when we discover God within. The Bible says, “And Simon Peter answered and said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.” Very significant words – try to understand them. Thou art the Christ. What does the word “Christ” means? The word means that which attracts. When we discover God within ourselves we become capable of attracting Christ, the Son of the Living God. It means a drop of the ocean has become capable of attracting the ocean. Christ is a meeting-point of the drop with the ocean, of the finite with the infinite, of the horizontal with the vertical. Where the horizontal and the vertical meet, that point of meeting is Christ. Here is the point, when Peter said, “Thou art the Christ,” he was saying in Jesus we witness the finite and the infinite coming together. In Jesus we perceive the Son of man and the Son of God. In Jesus we can make all boundaries dissolve and find ourselves. In Him we distinguish time and eternity meeting, life and death meeting.” This is the meaning of Christ: where the opposites meet and become one.
Today, we recognize the hidden Lord in ourselves as Christians! We are transformed by this acknowledgment into what God intended us to be.
John 8: 6-
