Hidden with Christ
The life kept safe
Imagine the most secure vault you can picture, deep underground, thick steel, every wall built to keep one precious thing beyond the reach of any thief or fire or flood. The thing inside is not lost. It is not gone. It is hidden, kept, safe. Now hear what Paul tells the Colossians about the truest thing about you: you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. The upheaval, you know too well, has a way of stripping things off, roles you wore, certainties you leaned on, a reputation, the old confident self you thought was the real you. The storm reached all of it, because all of it was on the surface, exposed to the weather. But the deepest you, your real life, was never out there where the wind could get to it. It was hidden, with Christ, in God, layered safe behind the One the shaking cannot touch. The psalmist sang of the same shelter long before: You are my hiding place; You will preserve me from trouble. There is a particular relief in this discovery, one that comes only on the far side of loss. What matters most about you was secured, all along, in the one place the storm could never reach.
“You died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
— Paul, to the Colossians — Colossians 3:3 (WEB)
“You are my hiding place. You will preserve me from trouble. You will surround me with songs of deliverance.”
Reconnect includes a deep, quiet relief: the discovery that your truest life was kept safe the whole time. Paul says you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. Re-rooting here is not adding something new but uncovering what was always secured. The storm could reach the surface, the roles and the reputation, but never the deepest self, which was hidden beyond its reach. Reconnection finds that the real you was held safe where the shaking could not come.
The upheaval stripped away a great deal you assumed was essential to you, the roles you wore, the certainties you leaned on, the confident old self you thought was the real you, and it can leave you feeling thinned out, scraped down to less than you were. Here is the relief Paul holds out. Your truest life was never on the exposed surface where the storm does its work. It is hidden with Christ in God, locked in the one vault no thief can crack, no fire reach, no flood touch. To be hidden here does not mean lost or forgotten; it means kept, the way something irreplaceable is locked in the one vault no thief can crack.
Your deepest identity has been secured in Christ, layered behind the very life of God, beyond the reach of anything that shakes the surface of a life. So you may feel diminished, and on the surface perhaps you genuinely are, smaller than you were before the loss. It is safe, kept, hidden in God, and the psalmist says you are even now surrounded with songs of deliverance, sung over the part of you the storm could never get to. What is hidden in God cannot be plundered by what merely scours the surface.
For long centuries much of the Church located its life in visible things, in cultural dominance, in Christendom's privileged seat at the center of society, in cathedrals and influence and unquestioned authority. All of that is precisely the surface a storm can scour away, and the recurring rummage sale Phyllis Tickle described, building on Mark Dyer, is doing just that to the Western Church in this moment. Yet the truest life of the Body was never in its standing. It is hidden with Christ in God, untouchable, the way an irreplaceable thing is sealed beyond reach. Before a watching world that pronounces the faith spent, the whole Church can rest in this: what is hidden in God cannot be taken by what only shakes the surface. The Body looks diminished and is not.
The surface of a life can be scoured down to almost nothing, the roles gone, the reputation spent, the old self unrecognizable. What cannot be shaken is the life kept in the vault: your truest self, hidden with Christ in God, beyond the reach of any storm. The shaking works only on the surface. The deepest you was secured before the trouble began, and it is secured still.
- What did the upheaval strip from my surface, and have I mistaken that loss for the loss of my truest self?
- Can I believe that the deepest me is hidden with Christ in God, beyond what any storm can reach?
- Where am I still anchoring my identity to fragile, surface things the shaking can take?
Lord, the storm reached so much I thought was me, and I have felt scraped down to almost nothing. Thank You that my truest life was never on the surface where the wind could get to it, but hidden with Christ in You, kept safe in the one place the shaking cannot reach. Quiet my fear of being diminished. You are my hiding place, and You surround even now with songs of deliverance. Amen.