November 14, 2025 // Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Wisdom 13:1-9
Reflect on the Word //
For months now, I’ve felt . . . hidden. Not in a self-protective way, and not from a lack of trying. I’ve shown up, been open, stayed prayerful—and yet, when it comes to dating, it’s as if God has placed a kind of covering over me. I’m not unseen because I’m avoiding love or withholding parts of myself. It’s deeper than that. I feel as if God Himself has hidden me, not to punish me, but to preserve me. I don’t fully understand it—but I can’t shake the sense that this hiddenness is His doing.
It’s easy to see what’s missing and assume God is absent. But what if hiddenness is not a punishment, but a form of protection? What if God sometimes hides us so we can better see Him? In today’s First Reading it says, “From the greatness and the beauty of created things, their original author [. . .] is seen” (Wisdom 13:5). It’s a reminder that God is not withholding Himself. He is revealing Himself—just not always in the ways we expect.
We search for clarity in outcomes, for God’s presence in answered prayers, for proof of being loved in being chosen. But sometimes, God removes those familiar lights so we learn to see Him as the source. In my own waiting, I’ve realized that what feels like hiddenness might actually be an invitation. I am being invited to look more closely, to notice how God is present in beauty, in longing, and even in delay.
So I wait—not unseen, but seen first by God. And maybe that is the deeper preparation: to be grounded in the eyes of the One Who formed me, before being revealed to someone else.
As we live in seasons that feel quiet, slow, or hidden, may we remember: God is not far. He’s not playing games with our desires. He is near, and He is revealing Himself—through beauty, through mystery, and yes, even through the ache of waiting.
Relate to the Lord // What are you waiting for? How is God revealing Himself to you in the waiting?
