God calls to us who are prisoners of sin, of our self-centered choices, of doubt and despair, of worry and anxiety, “Come out,” come out into the light of God’s love, into the mystery of God’s presence. To those of us stumbling around in the darkness of guilt and shame, of loss and grief, of estrangement and unforgiveness, of anger or fear, the Lord calls us to: “Show yourselves,” to allow the light of God’s love to surround us and bring us healing and peace. Are you ready to come out and show yourself, warts and all, trusting in God’s steadfast love to see you through the morass of your bondage, to transform you into the imago dei God created you to be?

There’s not one among us who doesn’t have something “hidden in darkness,” something that we don’t want the world to see, something that we are afraid would upset our carefully constructed applecart if we were to be exposed. We work hard to hide that elephant in our living room, to disguise it so no one will notice. Sometimes we even act as if we think that if we ignore it, it will go away. It doesn’t, of course. The only way to get rid of what we have “hidden in darkness” is to expose it to the light of the Lord’s redeeming love, trusting in God’s compassion and mercy to transform it into grace, to bring us into wholeness and holiness.

Everyone worries about something from time to time; some of us worry about everything all the time. Mostly we worry that there’s not enough—not enough money, not enough power, not enough prestige, not enough health, not enough love to go around, that, in life’s game of musical chairs, we’ll be the one left out when the music stops. O, we of little faith, how slow we are to realize that God wants to bless us, that the Lord means it when he says, “…I will not forget you. See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands,” that, with the mark of Christ’s nails, he has inscribed your name and my name into his being with incredible, unceasing love. When we finally have the courage to come out and show ourselves, along with all our senseless worries, we can trust the Lord to provide just what we need when we need it. In God’s economy, there always is more than enough, an overwhelming abundance waiting for us to be ready to receive.

Our “faithless fears and worldly anxieties” fade away when we come into God’s presence, when we accept the invitation to “Come out;…show yourselves!”