Why is the supernatural hidden? Why would God hide the supernatural if He wants us to engage with it? Here are two reasons:

1. To remind us there’s more out there than what we can simply see. Have you ever gotten distracted from what’s truly important because you were distracted by what you saw in front of you? Have you ever gotten so caught up in a career that you lost your family, and you realized that by chasing a promotion or fame and recognition or even worse, something as unfulfilling as money, that you woke up one day and realized you lost your kid’s childhood, you lost your family, you lost what was really important to you? Have you ever gotten so caught up in something as momentary as social media, where you became so enraptured by how perfect everyone else’s life seemed to be that you forgot to appreciate the incredible life you’ve been blessed with? Sometimes what we see can be a distraction.

I think one of the main reasons the supernatural remains hidden is to remind us that there is more out there than what we can simply see. As humans, it’s taken us thousands of years to truly appreciate this truth. You can’t see the wind, but if you’ve lived through a hurricane you know the wind is there. If you’ve ever gotten sick, you can’t see the parasites or germs that have infected you but you can’t deny it’s existence. Even today, with all of the advancement in medical technology, we can do scans on your brain, we can tell you how much it weighs and can map it out, but we can’t know what you’re thinking. Your mind, your personality, that part of you that’s unique that makes you ‘you,’ what we might call your soul or your spirit, is unseen, but it’s very much real and we all live it everyday.

I think the supernatural is hidden to always remind us that there’s more out there than what we can simply see.

2. To motivate us to seek God. We were created with this insatiable desire to know what we don’t know, to see what we can’t yet see. Let’s play out a little scenario: Let’s say you’re at your desk at work or school or you’re at home having dinner with the family or even better, right before you go to bed, once you decide you’re tired, you’ve stayed up too late and you need to go to bed. Your phone is nearby, but it’s out of sight. You can’t see your screen. And you hear the default notification sound (ding) letting you know someone is trying to tell you something through your phone.

Try hearing that sound, and see how long you can force yourself not to look. I mean, you’re right in the middle of an important task, you’re eating with the family, or even worse, you’re trying to fall asleep. How many of you could do it? How many of you could go to sleep, not knowing who the sound is from?

I mean, what if it’s important? What if it’s a friend that’s in need? What if it’s an important opportunity that has to be seized right now? The more we think about it, the more we want to know, the more we HAVE to know. I mean, what if it’s the President, and he’s got a top secret mission with Tom Cruise to save the world from a nuclear catastrophe, and I have to respond NOW!?!

So what do we do? What we always do. Our curiosity, our need to know, always win, so we reach over and look at our phone. And do you know what it is? It’s Talking Tom, notifying you that you haven’t played with him in 15 minutes and he’s lonely.

We all have this insatiable curiosity to know what’s out there, and God put it there. I think God hid the supernatural so that our insatiable curiosity would drive us to seek God and know Him. In fact, when the Apostle Paul was talking to a group of first century skeptics who didn’t believe in God or Jesus, he said the same thing:

From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27

There’s a reason the supernatural is hidden, to remind us that there’s more to life than what we can simply see, and to motivate us to follow our insatiable curiosity and seek after God.