“More sense of His care,” (“More Holiness Give Me”, Phillip Paul Bliss). Peek-a-boo is a game beloved by very young children because it helps them to get a grip on the concept of object permanence. When a parent hides their face behind their hands, their infant child truly believes that they have ceased to exist because they can't see them anymore. And then when the hands go away and they can see their parent’s face once more, they laugh with joy and relief that their parent has not, in fact, vanished from off the face of the Earth. As part of our mortal journey, we have to learn to walk by faith, which means that our Heavenly Father and our Savior Jesus Christ can't always be present before our eyes. Thus, when it comes to God, we also struggle with the concept of object permanence. We assume that just because we can't see God, then He must not exist. Or, if we do have a firm testimony of the existence of God, we may struggle with something that is a little more subtle but no less disheartening. We may begin to feel that if we cannot see the purpose behind our suffering and struggles, then it must be the case that God, Who is all powerful and all knowing, must simply not care about us and our problems, or He would help to alleviate them with alacrity and extreme prejudice. But our Heavenly Father does care. Our Savior not only cares but knows our pain exactly, for He suffered it Himself. If we turn our back to the Sun and screw our eyes shut real tight and ball our fists over them and hunch down so that we can see nothing, this does not mean that the Sun ceases to shine. In the same way, if we turn our back on the Son of God and harden our heart and shut our eyes and our ears and try to close ourselves off completely from the Savior and His influence, this does not mean that the Son ceases to care. If we have lost all sense of how much the Savior cares for us, then we can pray for more sense of His care. We will be amazed at how quickly our attitude will change when we start to realize that not only does the Savior care about us, He cares about us more than every single other person in our life, including ourselves. The more that we accept and acknowledge and embrace just how much the Savior cares about us, the more we will put our trust and our faith in Him. As we accept that He cares, we will also begin to accept His care, so that He can truly heal and cleanse and sanctify us.
