Many people today are hiding from God. They avoid reading the Bible, they avoid attending church, or they avoid other Christians hoping that in the process that can escape some confrontation with their Creator.

They are like the little child that plays hide-and-go-seek for the first time. When told to go hide, he stands in the middle of the room with his hands over his eyes. 

“What are you doing?” someone asks. 

“I’m hiding,” he replies. He thinks because he can’t see others, others can’t see him.

There are a lot of reasons that people might hide from God, but as you look through the Bible you will discover that guilt – the realization that we have done something wrong – is the major motivation for running away from God. It has been that way since the Garden of Eden. Sin produces guilt and guilt results in separation—hiding—from God. But there is hope for those of us hiding from God.

God searches for us in spite of our sin (Luke 19:1-5).  

God searches for us even when we are hiding from Him. In Luke 19, Zaccheus wanted to see Jesus without Jesus seeing him, so he climbed into a tree. Jesus stopped, looked up, and said, "Hurry, come down, for I must stay at your house today." That word "must" is "dei" in Greek, which means "of moral necessity." (Luke 19:5)

Jesus had to stay in Zaccheus home—not because Jesus didn’t have any lunch plans and needed a place to eat. He had a divine appointment with this chief sinner of Jericho to offer him what he needed most. 

And notice that it is Jesus who took the initiative in seeking out Zaccheus. Jesus planned to go through Jericho to see Zaccheus just as He planned to go through Samaria to see the woman, and just as He orchestrated the events in your life to bring the gospel to you.

God forgives us of our sin (Luke 19:6-7).

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus knew Zaccheus’ name though He had never been introduced to him? I imagine that got Zaccheus’ attention immediately! We shouldn’t be surprised that Jesus knew the name of Zaccheus—He is the God who created Zaccheus and knew everything about him. 

God knows you because God made you. He knows your name. He knows everything about you and knows exactly where you are even when you are hiding. 

The one theme we’ve seen throughout Luke is that Jesus doesn’t hate those who are lost, He loves them, searches for them, and rejoices when He finds them.

Jesus frees us from our sin (Luke 19:8-10).

We have no idea of the actual conversation that took place between Jesus and Zaccheus at the lunch table that day. But somewhere during the meal, Zaccheus stopped the proceedings and made an announcement to the crowd that was present.

Luke 19:8 says, “And Zaccheus stopped and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, Lord, half of my possessions I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will give back four times as much.’”

This is not a half-hearted confession. It is better translated, "Since I have defrauded…”

His willingness to give back four times what he had stolen shows he had a repentant heart. The Mosaic Law only required that an individual return the part illegally gained in a fraud case and add 20 percent to it (Lev. 6:5). On the other hand, a case of theft required the four to one payment that Zaccheus proposed.

By his actions Zaccheus was saying that even though his sin was technically fraud and he could have gotten by with a lesser penalty, he admitted that this was really a theft and he voluntarily took the greater punishment. This was a sign of genuine repentance.

The only person who can set you free, not just from the penalty of sin in the future, but the power of sin right now is Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus came to Earth:   “To seek and to save those who are lost.” To find us, to forgive us, and to free us from the power of sin, so that we can follow Him.  

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair and his beard cut as always. He started to have a good conversation with the barber who attended him. They talked about so many things on various subjects. 

Suddenly, they touched the subject of God. The barber said, 'Look man, I don't believe that God exists as you say so.' 

“Why do you say that?' 

Asked the client Well, it's so easy. You just have to go out in the street to realize that God does not exist. Oh, tell me, if God existed, would there be so many sick people? Would there be abandoned children? If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain. "I can't think of a God who permits all of these things.' 

The client stopped for a moment thinking but he didn't want to respond so as to prevent an argument. 

The barber finished his job and the client went out of the shop. 

Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with a long hair and beard (it seems that it had been a long time since he had his cut and he looked so untidy). 

Then the client again entered the barbershop and he said to the barber: "know what? Barbers do not exist." 

"How come they don't exist?" asked the barber. “Well I am here and I am a barber." 

"No!" – the client exclaimed. "They don't exist because if they did there would be no people with long hair and beard like that man who walks in the street." 

'Ah, barbers do exist, what happens is that people do not come to us.' 

'Exactly!’ Affirmed the dient. 

That's the point. 

God does exist, what happens is people don't go to Him and do not look for Him that's why there's so much pain and suffering in the world." 

The Start Of It All

Roughly 13.75 billion years ago, our universe came into existence. Very shortly thereafter, primordial light started shooting across the cosmos and spreading throughout the early universe. At this juncture, the universe itself was also expanding. The inflation of the universe slowed after the first initial burst, but since then, the rate of expansion has been steadily increasing due to the influence of dark energy.

Essentially, since its inception, the cosmos has been growing at an ever increasing rate. Cosmologists estimate that the oldest photons that we can observe have traveled a distance of 45-47 billion light-years since the Big Bang. That means that our observable universe is some 93 billion light-years wide (give or take a few light-years). These 93 some-odd billion light-years contain all of the quarks, quasars, stars, planets, nebulae, black holes…and everything else that we could possibly observe; however, the observable universe only contains the light that has had time to reach us.

A lot more universe exists beyond what we are able to observe.

How can the universe be 93 billion light-years across if it is only 13.8 billion years old? Light hasn’t had enough time to travel that far…? Ultimately, understanding this facet of physics is the key to understanding what lies beyond the edge of the observable universe and whether we could ever get there.

To break this down, according to special relativity, objects that are close together cannot move faster than the speed of light with respect to one another; however, there is no such law for objects that are extremely distant from one another when the space between them is, itself, expanding. In short, it’s not that objects are traveling faster than the speed of light, but that the space between objects is expanding, causing them to fly away from each other at amazing speeds.

Ultimately, this means that we could only reach the edge of the observable universe if we develop a method of transport that allows us to either 1) Travel faster than the speed of light (something which most physicists think is impossible) 2) Transcend spacetime (by using wormholes or warp drive, which most physicists also think is impossible).

According to the theory of cosmic inflation, the entire universe’s size is at least 10^23 times larger than the size of the observable universe.

Ultra Deep Field via Hubble/NASA

That’s a lot of universe that we are missing. So, what *exactly* are we missing? What is outside the observable universe? Unfortunately, since we can’t see it or measure it, we don’t know what lies beyond the bounds of the observable universe. However, we have several theories regarding what exists in the great unknown.

Encountering The Unknown

Despite its strangeness, this first idea is one of the easiest to digest. Astronomers think space outside of the observable universe might be an infinite expanse of what we see in the cosmos around us, distributed pretty much the same as it is in the observable universe. This seems logical. After all, it doesn’t make sense that one section of the universe would be different than what we see around us. And honestly, who can envision a universe that has an end—a huge brick wall lurking at its edge?

So, in some ways, infinity makes sense. But “infinity” means that, beyond the observable universe, you won’t just find more planets and stars and other forms of material…you will eventually find every possible thing. Every. Possible. Thing.

That means that, if this holds true and we follow it to its logical conclusion, somewhere out there, there is another person who is identical to you in every possible way, and there is also a you who is only slightly different from you in every possible way (one is an inch shorter; one got hit by a bus 5 years ago and died; one has a missing finger etc.). In fact, this “other you” may be reading this article right now; the only difference is that they just picked their nose while you didn’t (or did you?). This notion seems inconceivable. But then, infinity is rather inconceivable.

Model of dark flow

Another theory deals with something called “dark flow.” In 2008, astronomers discovered something very strange and unexpected—galactic clusters were all streaming in the same direction at immense speed, over two million miles per hour. One possible cause: Massive structures outside the observable universe exerting gravitational influence. As for the structures themselves, they could be literally anything: Amazingly huge accumulations of matter and energy (on scales we can hardly imagine) or even bizarre warps in space-time that are funneling gravitational forces from other universes. We simply don’t know what these massive objects could be. Notably, recent analyses have claimed to debunk the dark flow model, but this debunking is still being disputed.

Another option involves a universe of universes. Some believe that the whole of our universe could exist in a small “bubble” in the midst of a vast array of other bubbles. Theorists call this a “multiverse.” Interestingly, the idea asserts that these universes can come into contact with one another—gravity can flow between these parallel universes, and when they connect, a Big Bang like the one that created our universe may occur.

These ideas are just a few of the more popular hypotheses. There are a lot more out there but