A Better Hiding Place
“Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones You have broken may rejoice. Hide Your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.” (Psalm 51:8-9 NKJV)
I recently passed by a house covered in vines, probably of the kudzu variety.*
No one had entered this creepy place for a long time, based on the vine growth and front steps. An old mattress and bedframe by the porch testified to complete abandonment. In summertime, the home would be hidden beneath a thick canopy of leaves.
Winter weather, though, had revealed the house’s presence beneath the dead vines. The smothering vegetation that formerly covered it was gone, opening it up to examination by curious people like me.
The house’s derelict state makes a great prompt for your imagination to run wild. Who lived there? Why did they desert it? The structure doesn’t look terribly old but simply covered up and left to decay and ruin.
When I asked around for analogies, one of my blogger friends (Mama Lava at https://mamalava.wordpress.com. Check out her blogs!) suggested it’s like hidden wickedness in our hearts. “Try as we might,” she said, “we can’t camouflage our sin, especially from God.”
So true! Going into hiding isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes we need to get away alone with God, to worship Him in silence and hear what He has to say to us.
But there’s no hiding our sins from Him. He knows everything about us—where we are, what we’re doing, and all the intentions of our hearts. He says that even the hairs on our heads are all numbered (Matthew 10:29-31).
Look at Adam and Eve. Right after they ate the forbidden fruit, they recognized their nakedness, sewed fig-leaf coverings for themselves, and tried to hide in the garden. God called out to them, “Where are you?” Yet He already knew where they were, what they had done, and what was to come. He already knew the anguish of sending His Son, Jesus, to die for that original sin.
There are others in Scripture. Elijah fearfully hid in a cave but was called out by God to finish his job. Jonah hid in a boat from his assignment to Nineveh and was swallowed by a great fish before following through on God’s plan.
David was one of the biggest culprits. He tried to hide his adultery with Bathsheba by killing her husband, Uriah. The prophet Nathan called David on the carpet about it, and David’s repentance led to writing Psalm 51—an intense plea to God for forgiveness and cleansing.
Hiding our sin nature is nothing new, obviously. Yet we still try. We lock up our iniquities in the closets of our hearts—not dealing with them, not repenting of them, not acknowledging them before God. Worst of all, we fail to accept God’s forgiveness and fail to forgive ourselves in the process.
Why in the world do we hide? Those old sin patterns are eventually going to haunt us, like the skeletons that they are. We live in fear that our fragile front will shatter, with our vices brought to light.
It’s really a lot easier to just get things over and done with, like ripping the bandage off a festering wound, bringing in light and fresh air for healing. Like David in Psalm 51, we need to ask God to “purge us with hyssop” and make our hearts white as snow. God is ready, all hours of night and day, to hear our repentance prayers and cover our sins with His divine grace. We simply have to confess we’ve done wrong.
Not all our sins need to be made public. But every single one can be eliminated from our souls as we confess them to God. “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:12). That’s another psalm written by David, encouraging others to receive God’s mercy as he did.
Friend, there’s a great deal of freedom in full repentance, when you plead with our Lord for strength to make a 180-degree turn away from evil habits. There’s a great deal of joy when you get to the other side of His cleansing process. There’s a great deal of peace in knowing you’re forgiven and won’t have to pay the penalty for your wrong-doing in eternity. Jesus has paid for it all.
Next time you and I are tempted to cover up our vices, let’s remember that kudzu-covered house and what might be inside…probably a lot of neglected nastiness. Let’s watch our Savior as He sweeps out every grubby nook and cranny that we bring to Him in humility and sorrow. Let’s rejoice in seeing our “heart closets” all spic and span from His healing touch.
Resting in the peace of our loving Lord’s arms is a much better hiding place!
Gracious God, I come before you in earnest, knowing how many times today I have failed to acknowledge You in my life and habits. Please forgive me for the ways I have sinned against You and others. Wash me now, whiter than snow, and toss my sins into the bottom of the ocean where they belong. Restore my strength, and sanctify me with your cleansing power. Send me forth to serve You alone. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Nancy C. Williams is a Christian wife/mom with a writing career spanning more than 40 years in business and journalism. Williams is the author of the novel To Love a Falcon and the devotional book A Crocus in the Desert: Devotions, Stories, and Prayers for Women Experiencing Infertility. Her blogs are featured on Crossmap.com and AriseDaily. To follow Nancy’s posts and news, go to her home page at NancyCWilliams.com and subscribe at the bottom.
© Copyright 2025 Nancy C. Williams (text and photography). Unless otherwise noted, Scripture verses are taken from the New King James Version®, Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved. #kudzu #sin #confession #psalm51 #bathsheba #kingdavid #repentance
*If you don’t know about kudzu, it’s an Asian vine once planted along roadways in the South to prevent soil erosion. Instead of being helpful, it became the “thing that ate Mississippi.” It covers everything and is very difficult to remove. Check out another kudzu-covered house here: https://nmnh.typepad.com/the_plant_press/2014/05/china-expedition-2013-a-tale-of-typhoon-tossed-kudzu-by-ashley-n-egan.html
