You Are the God Who Sees Me
It had been a day
of hurtful words,
misunderstood actions,
questioned motives,
and tears.
It seemed no matter
what I did
or what I didn’t do,
– the just being myself
and trying my best
to serve and help
and make better –
was misconstrued,
was misjudged,
was mistaken,
was all wrong
and not one bit right.
In a moment of escape,
I had retreated
to my bedroom
and into the pages
of God’s Holy Word.
And,
that’s when it happened.
As I worked through
the daily scripture readings
given for this
particular day
in a study on Hebrews,
I found myself
reading in Genesis 16.
The story of Hagar
to be exact.
Unable to bear
Abram any children,
Sarai, his wife,
had asked her husband
to take her servant, Hagar,
as a wife
in hopes of becoming
a mother through her.
Abram agreed,
and without
consulting with Hagar
about the agreement –
(the Bible doesn’t give us
any indication that Hagar
had any say in the matter at all),
Hagar found herself
with Abram
and soon,
with child.
Naturally,
this created
a huge amount of tension
between Sarai and Hagar,
and eventually,
in a moment of escaping
any more mistreatment from Sarai,
Hagar ran away from her home
and into the wilderness.
We pick up the story
in Genesis 16:7 –
The angel of the Lord found Hagar
near a spring of water in the wilderness –
the spring that is along the road to Shur.
He said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai,
where have you come from,
and where are you going?”
She replied, “I’m running away
from my mistress, Sarai.”
Then the angel of the Lord said to her,
“Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.
“Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.
I will greatly multiply your descendants,”
the angel of the Lord added,
“so that they will be too numerous to count.”
Then the angel of the Lord said to her,
“You are now pregnant
and are about to give birth to a son.
You are to name him Ishmael,
for the Lord has heard your painful groans.
He will be a wild donkey of a man.
He will be hostile to everyone,
and everyone will be hostile to him.
He will live away from his brothers.”
So Hagar named the Lord who spoke to her,
“You are the God who sees me,”
for she said, “Here I have seen one who sees me!”
~Genesis 16:7-13
My name wasn’t Hagar
and I wasn’t pregnant with Ishmael,
but in so many ways
my heart knew exactly
how she felt
as she aimlessly
ran through the wilderness,
no doubt with tears
streaming down her cheeks.
And it was here,
in this place of
escape,
in this place of
retreating from the hurt,
she
saw
the God
who
sees us.
The God
who
sees me.
The God
who
sees you.
“You are the God who sees me.”
As I read these words,
tears fell from
my own eyes.
To know that
my God
sees me.
My God
knows me.
My God
understands me.
My God
is with me.
In the hurt
of words and actions,
in the heat
of tension and relationships,
in the alone
of escaping and retreating
and running away,
You are the God who sees me.
To be sure,
Hagar’s situation
hadn’t changed
because of this encounter.
She was
to go back to Sarai,
to submit,
to continue dealing with
what she had been dealing with.
As for her son,
his future didn’t look
free of turmoil or tension either.
No,
Hagar’s circumstances
were still going
to be the same
but we can be
sure
Hagar herself
would never be the same.
You can’t encounter
the living God
and continue living
life the way you knew it.
You can’t see the
God who sees you
and not be changed.
Just look at Nathaneal
who had been sitting under a fig tree.
Just look at the woman
who went to the well to gather water.
Just look at Saul
on the road to Damascus.
Just look at me
sitting in my bedroom.
No –
when you see
the God who sees you –
and you know
that you know
that you know
He sees you.
You are forever changed.
And you fall
on your knees
and you worship.
And then,
you get up on your feet
and you follow
this God
who sees you.
~Stacy
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