by Jonathan Ho

At the time of this edition’s publishing, it will have been a few weeks since I found out where my long-lost friend was. He had vanished from Facebook and changed his phone number. My friends and I joked about how we should start a podcast and record our research and attempts at finding my friend. Knowing what I know now, I’m glad we never started that podcast.

Mark Twain once said, “Life is stranger than fiction.” He said this was true because fiction must stick with possibilities while truth does not. In other words, what we imagine (fiction) comes from our imagination and can only be as we imagine, but reality doesn’t have to be according to our imaginations. Put another way, if I write a book, I can only write from what I know, but the world is much bigger and more complex than I know.

If you’re like me, you’ve grown up with many expectations in life. You expected that if you did something good then you’d get something good. You expected that if you prayed, listened to God, read your Bible, and were filled with the Holy Spirit then you would be ready to walk in this world. As you continued in life, you realized that life didn’t fit into neat little boxes. Knowing the Bible didn’t save you from making mistakes, and being filled with the Holy Spirit didn’t keep you fearless.

In this edition of KRC, the writers were asked to write about something hidden. Hidden things have two aspects: one of being obscured/lost, and the other of being unseen. The danger of keeping things hidden is that they prevent us from knowing God more fully and from more fully loving one another. What we don’t know can not only hurt us, but can also hurt others. In this edition, Hannah writes about hiding from the realities of God-given emotion, Scott writes about the hidden power of the body of Christ, I write about our hidden cultural bias, and Brandon writes of our hidden schemes for personal gain through serving God.

I assumed my long-lost friend was traveling in another country or maybe dead. Little did I know that he had kept his own secrets and was now in prison. Life doesn’t always work the way we want, and sometimes the hidden things will shock us. However, our God is not one whose plans are evil, but rather good beyond our wildest imaginations. As you turn these pages, I invite you to open yourself to discovering the hidden in life, knowing that the pain of uncertainty and fear are not the end of the story. May God expose our hidden hearts and desires and shine his light on them to reveal his goodness and character. May we not settle for half-truths and imagination, but rather, may we pursue Christ to live in his fullness and truth.

Jonathan Ho

P.S. As always, we’d love to hear from you. Have a thought or response to one of the articles? We’d love to hear your story. Email krc.english@gmail.com with any stories, feedback, thoughts, and questions you might have.