Testify that God is your Hiding Place

Psalm 32:7

You are a hiding place for me;
From distress you deliver me,
With shouts of rescue you surround me

“Hiding place” is sether in Hebrew, meaning a place of covering and secrecy, where troubles and enemies cannot find me. I know this in my head, but I had forgotten what it meant in my life till I read a psalm commentary by an early church father.

Theodore of Mopsuestia (d. 428), Commentary on Psalms 1-81, linked Psalm 32 to King Hezekiah. “What?!” I was flabbergasted, “How is Hezekiah linked to Psalm 32, especially verse 7!” Theodore said this verse pointed to the fact the God was Hezekiah’s refuge when the Assyrians came to inflict him and that God surrounded him from troubles due to his illness.

Then I heard God, “I am your hiding place. I shielded and protected you when you cried out to me 15 years ago and delivered you.” I remember singing the song You are My Hiding Place in my head because I couldn’t sing with my vocal cords. I remember that God healed King Hezekiah and gave him 15 more years.

Similarly, God had healed me of my thyroid cancer and surrounded me with “songs of deliverance”. It was through this illness that God delivered me from my “spiritual death”. I had known the Lord in my college days but when I embarked on my career, all I wanted was a partnership in the firm and to be rich and live luxuriously. But none of it mattered in the face of cancer. I confessed my sin, repented, and re-dedicated my life to Christ Jesus again. God not only delivered me, but eventually, he also brought my loved ones—my parents, parents-in-law, and my siblings-in-law—to know Christ.

How could I have forgotten, even if for a little while, of what God has done for me? It took Theodore of Mopsuestia to bring this back to me 15 years later. God reminded me to testify of him, especially to people who need to know him also as their sether, their hiding place. After all, this is what the psalmist does at the end of the psalm, when he calls on others not to be like a mule but to come near to God (v. 9). He is not just my hiding place, he is also yours. Come, hide in him and testify to others about him.

Janet Tan
(Occasional Student)