When our two girls were growing up, they did not have all the latest and fanciest toys and gadgets, but they had plenty to keep them occupied.

We lived in the country, and we usually had some kind of food growing. Our girls knew what it was to try a taste test after pinching the top out of fresh spring onions and pulling tender carrots out of the ground, as well as the pleasure of eggs for breakfast produced by our hens. And I will choose not to say anything about the pigs and calves that they observed until the day those animals mysteriously vanished. (I will only say that we always had plenty of meat to put on the table! There is nothing quite like a biscuit made up with hog lard and filled with fried fatback! And the best part is we could eat all that good stuff with a clear conscience, not realizing that it was harmful to our health, as we are told today.)

Not only did Sandra and Jessica have access to so many things to learn from on the outside, they had some toys that they enjoyed inside the house. One of them was a tunnel that they could crawl into and hide. Little girls get a big thrill out of such simple things; our girls had a great time crawling into that thing and letting their little minds carry them into the endless world of makebelieve.

Hiding in a toy tunnel, under a bed or behind a mask is all right for children, but not so for adults. Hopefully none of us hide in the kinds of places just mentioned, but we are sometimes guilty of hiding behind a deceptive life — pretending to be one kind of person, but deep down inside being another.

After Christ’s healing of a lady who had been crippled for many years, one of the religious leaders spoke strong condemnation of what the Lord had done because it had taken place on the Sabbath. In response to the opposition of the religious leader, “The Lord answered him, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie his ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water? Then should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has kept bound for eighteen long years, be set free on the Sabbath day from what bound her?” (Luke 13:15- 16, NIV).

Many of the religious leaders in Christ’s day were hypocrites who hid behind religiosity while in reality their hearts were far from God. In the case in Luke 13, the synagogue leader pretended to have a deep concern for keeping God’s Law while what he was really doing is attempting to discredit the life and ministry of Christ, the One sent by God that he pretended to serve.

Hypocrisy is a dangerous state of the heart. It is a deception that can be hidden behind so perfectly that people do not realize what is taking place. But we can be sure that God sees our lives clearly and accurately. Just as Christ recognized the hypocrisy of the religious leaders while He was on earth, He knows which hearts today are genuine and which are not.

Eternity is too serious of a matter to take lightly. We cannot afford to hide behind religious activity or anything else; instead, we must present ourselves honestly before God and allow Him to make our hearts genuine in His sight, so we can serve Him acceptably.