Hide and Seek

Do you ever find that it seems that God's favorite game is hide and seek? There are times in life when you can't find Him, all you want to yell is Oli Oli oxen free!! I said this the other day and totally meant it. Then started to think of the phrase, what in the world does that mean, Oli Oli oxen free, so I did a little Google search... although know one knows for sure, here is my discovery.... One guess is that the original was something like “all in free” for “all who are out can come in free”, to indicate that the person who is “it” in the game of hide-and-seek has caught somebody to become the new “it”, and so everybody else can come out of hiding without the risk of being caught, and through children's mispronunciation became what it is today"....or It may possibly be from the German phrase "Alle, alle auch sind frei!", which means "everybody is free!"

Two things struck me, one, that through a child’s speech something, a phrase, spread quickly and rampantly... yet it was wrong. that their misspeak created an entirely different phrase that means the same thing but sounds completely different. I wonder if that happens with us and God, that maybe He said one thing, we translate it to be different. Through a lot more work end up getting the original message...all in free.

Secondly, realizing, what the phrase is, everybody is free, which only through God’s gift of His son Jesus. He paid our price of sin. He was the one who became it, so we could play. So maybe just maybe, its God who calls out Oli Oli Oxen free…come out, come out, everyone can come in free…for you are no longer in risk of loosing the game…its been won for you.


Matt 7:7-8
7"Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.