Advent Day 21: Hiding Place

The Apostles' Hiding Place (La Retraite des Apotres), James Tissot, 1886–1894. Opaque watercolor over graphite on paper, 17.1 x 23.8 cm. Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York. Public Domain.

“You are My Hiding Place” from the album Hiding Place. Performed by Selah, composed by Michael Ledner.

Poetry:

“The Sea Here, Teaching Me”
by Moira Linehan

the sea saying, This is how you pray
to your rock of a god, your massive cliff
of a god, sheer drop into the bay,
immovable, not-going-anywhere
kind of god. Look at photos from a hundred
years ago. Your god’s not moved. Glacial remains
of a god. Impenetrable. Can’t-wear-it-
down god. Rock face of a god. Face it.
You’re a dot on the landscape, a sheep’s droppings
before this god. The sea telling me, Maybe
the wind will side with you. Maybe it won’t.
So you wait, wait for a day in November,
a day like yesterday, the wind wild
off the Atlantic, but backing you up,
making you come wave upon wave face to face
with the wall of your god. Telling me,
You stand up as wave, are shattered to spray,
lifted as mist. You keep being lifted up
and over the fields beyond that cliff, mist
falling now over the matted wet wool
on the backs of sheep, their faces pushed
into grass. The sea, teaching me to say,
“So be it. So be it.”

A Hiding Place

Even if only plinked out on a toy piano, the first six notes of “You Are My Hiding Place” will surely evoke a wave of emotion in any of the millions of Christians across the world to whom the Holy Spirit has brought comfort and peace that passes all understanding through this beautiful psalm song. Having grown up in the church home of the Maranatha Singers, I remember desiring my parents to play this song or sing it to me every night a childhood fear wedged its way into my heart. Each minor chord combined with the uplifting truth of the psalmic lyrics brought pools of tears to my eyes as fears began to shed away, because my heart remembered that Jesus and not my bed was my real hiding place. A geographic place to hide may offer temporary safety from danger, but we have far more than a mere location in which to hide. We have a Father who gave us His only begotten Son as a Savior who himself is our Hiding Place. He doesn’t need to build a refuge and a fortress for us, He is our refuge and fortress.

Tissot’s masterful portfolio consists of hundreds of paintings illustrating the gospel including today’s work of art,The Apostles’ Hiding Place, and its companion pieceThe Disciples Having Left Their Hiding Place Watch from Afar in Agony. In the former, the disciples appear quite exposed, and their physical hiding place offers little protection. Their faces are fearful and without hope as they crouch and lie scattered among the rocks and crevices. They are sheep who have left their Good Shepherd—their only true Hiding Place. In the latter painting we see them only from the back, having crept out of their scant refuge in the direction of their True Refuge. Tissot magnificently captures the vast distance that still lies between them and the cross. At that moment, what would it have been like for them to have remembered the sound of Jesus’ voice reciting the words from today’s psalms? To remember that they may still abide under the shadow of the Almighty, even as darkness came over the land? Their Hiding Place, the Son of God, was making a way for them from death to life. The power of sin and death was broken and their accuser and enemy was disarmed. He was, and is, and always will be our Hiding Place who fills our hearts with songs of deliverance, and in whom we can and indeed must trust whenever we are afraid.

I don’t know if Mary sang these psalms to her baby boy in the manger, or if she whispered them in his small ears as they escaped to Egypt; but I am grateful for King David’s faithfulness to give them to her, to the apostles, and to us. May we never grow too old to sing this song of comfort and protection as we remember the Father’s gift of the Son, our Hiding Place in whom we can dwell forever without fear.

Prayer:
Almighty Father, as we approach Christmas Eve and the dark of night surrounds us, may our hearts be filled with the knowledge of our full security in your incarnate Son Jesus Christ, our Hiding Place, a rock and fortress impregnable by any earthly power or principality. Let your songs of deliverance never depart from our hearts. When we think of the shepherds on those hills outside of Bethlehem who saw your angels and were sore afraid, let us remember that you sent them straight to your Hiding Place. For unto us a child was born, a Savior you have given. We pray these words in the sweet and safe name of Jesus.
Amen.

Dr. Matt Van Hook
Associate Professor
Torrey Honors College
Biola University

For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, please visit our website via the link in our bio.