I have a 3 year old son. He is in so many ways the opposite of his brother (even though he wants to be just like his older sibling). He is stubborn and precocious and really like to play by his own set of rules. On top of all of that he is just so darn cute that it takes every ounce of my “I am responsible if he grows up to be a brat” knowledge that I hold in me to punish him most of the time.

All of this makes bed times at our house particularly trying some times. I am sure that I am not the only one who has these sorts of nights, but there are times when he decides to get up multiple times to come and tell us something. We now have a pretty hard and fast rule that says if you get up out of bed you are in trouble. This rule works on my 6 year-old. He is afraid of getting in trouble. My 3 year-old doesn’t like to get in trouble, but the fear of it doesn’t keep him from doing what he wants.

So I told you all of that to tell you this. The other night I was sitting on the couch watching television when I see my youngest son walking down the hall. He is walking in the hall, hall light on, right past me, but he is walking slowly and he hiding his face from me with a pillow. Yes, that’s right my son was trying to hide from me simply by hiding his face from me like I am going to think it could be any small person in his pajamas slinking down the hall towards his mother.

Needless to say he was in trouble (even though it was hard not to laugh at him, especially when he smiled real big at me in a way that made me think he may have known he wasn’t really hiding, but was hoping I would just play along). But I couldn’t stop thinking about the audacity of the kid to think he could hide when I could still see him.

I think most Christians live this way when it comes to God. We act like He can’t see us and in the light of day (or maybe more accurately when we are alone at night) we do what it is that we want to do instead of what He has told us to do.

So when I start acting in a way that I know is against God’s best for me, I am trying to remember my son walking down the hall with a pillow over his face because that is essentially what I am doing. I have to know that God can see me and that the consequences of my actions are something that I will never be able to hide from.