June 8, 2021
“She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.’”1
There may be moments in our life when we feel like we are seemingly forgotten in this world, but we can find comfort in knowing that we have a God who sees us.
This is true of the Old Testament story of Hagar, a woman displaced from her home country to work as a maidservant. In her distress, she ran away from the household of Abraham and Sarah, where her body was used as a surrogate to produce an offspring for them.
When Hagar felt like there was nothing good left in this world for her, Scripture tells us that an angel of the Lord found her near a spring in the desert and comforted her. The angel told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her. … I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”2
God sees our secret world and understands that we all have a fundamental need to be seen and acknowledged. Like Hagar, when we see through the eyes of faith, we will meet with a God who sees us every second of every day. God watches over what He created, and for us to know that we are under the loving gaze of our heavenly Father can truly change our perspective. We all need a gentle reminder that God does see us.
This is why the well where Hagar had an encounter with the angel between Kadesh and Bered is called “Beer Lahai Roi,” which means, “well of the Living One who sees me.” Whatever name we would choose to give God divulges as much about our need as it would about the character of God. It is through our need that we experience God in our deepest way. This is what Hagar discovered in the desert: God sees me. He knows my name. He knows who I am. Hagar has now met with an intimate and personal God who has compassion on her.
Even in the darkest night of our soul, we are not alone in the troubles that we face. Like Hagar, we can find comfort and rest because we have a God who sees us.—Brett McBride
I had a basic knowledge of who Hagar was through the various illustrated Bibles I had read as a child. But this year, after deciding to read through the Bible cover to cover, I came away from her story with new perspectives on God’s individual love for each of us.
Hagar was an Egyptian servant to Sarah, Abraham’s wife. She first appears as somewhat of a secondary character in the story of Abraham and the covenants God makes with him. God had promised Abraham offspring as countless as the stars, but Sarah—still not pregnant, and growing impatient at the lack of fulfillment of God’s promise—asks Abraham to lie with Hagar, her servant.
Abraham agrees, and Hagar soon finds herself expecting a child. When she finds herself pregnant by Abraham, perhaps she begins to feel that things are looking up for her. Perhaps she hopes that here is a way to define herself amidst a strange people. Perhaps she begins to gloat, as the Bible tells us that she then “began to despise her mistress.”3
Sarah complains to Abraham, and Abraham tells Sarah that Hagar is her business, and that Sarah can do as she sees fit. Whatever Sarah decided to do was enough to cause pregnant Hagar to run away into the desert, where we next find her sitting by a spring, slaking her thirst.4
Here is the part of the story that I love: God sends an angel to find this runaway girl and talk her into returning home to Abraham’s camp. This was a girl who probably felt like she was no one in anyone’s eyes, who probably felt unwanted and unloved; this girl with her ego and her faults and her failings; this girl who was Egyptian instead of Hebrew, who perhaps still held on to her previous traditions and believed in the Egyptian gods; this girl who had despised her mistress and who was undeserving of mercy; this girl who will doubtless go on to screw up more times in the future.
It’s here in the desert—in the midst of her sin and despair—that God appears to Hagar, because underneath the layers of circumstance and choice and faults and failing beats the heart of the creation that God had breathed life into. And that’s what God sees and is out to rescue when He sends an angel to find this girl whose existence began in His imagination and whose life’s story He had recorded in His book.
That one encounter with an angel in that desert place is enough to encourage Hagar to return home. But before returning home she gives a name to this God who searched her out and spoke to her. She called Him “the God who sees me.”5
We all experience times when we feel quite unworthy of being seen by God. But it’s when you feel most unworthy of love, and yet God does something for you and says you are still worthy, that changes you. And that’s what God did for Hagar that day. He showed her that He cared for her, He was watching out for her, and that He had her life charted out. That’s the power of being seen by God. It was that power that gave Hagar inner strength to return to a situation that she had felt was intolerable just days before.
There is so much I like about this story, but here are three main points:
First, there are no secondary characters to God. Perhaps biblical narrative has pushed Hagar’s story into what can be told in one or two chapters and addresses her mainly as a supporting role to the main story of Abraham and Sarah’s life. But God had a book with her name on it, and which she starred in—the story of her life. And that is true for everyone who feels like a secondary character in someone else’s story.
Second, God is aware of the ugliest, lowest moments of your life, yet He still believes in you. This knowledge gave Hagar enough strength to return to that difficult situation that God had placed her in. Wherever you’re at right now, whatever your spiritual or physical state, you have a God who sees you and believes in you.
Third, I love that God went and found Hagar when she ran away. God sees just where you’re at emotionally and physically—geographically, too—and there’s nothing that can separate you from His love. He will chase you down and find you and set you back on your feet.
Hagar’s story is relevant for us today. Wherever you’re at in life and regardless of how you feel, you have a God who sees you, and nothing on this earth—not even your failings—can separate you from this kind of God. As Paul said: “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”6—Roald Watterson
Every time Sarah or Abraham mentioned Hagar in their conversations, she was simply referred to as “my slave” or “your slave.”7 ... I can only imagine how demoralizing that must have been for Hagar.
But when God found Hagar at the well, the first word out of His mouth was “Hagar.”8 Up until this point in the narrative, we don’t even know if Hagar knew who God was, but He certainly knew who she was. In fact, He knew her name, and He showed her respect by using it.
It’s the same with you. God knows your name. As His precious child, He knows each and every “sheep” by name.9 And, not only is your name known, it is “engraved” on the palm of his hand.10 Being engraved carries a deeper implication than being written. Being engraved means it is “cut, carved” into God’s palm, implying permanence, something that cannot be erased.
Furthermore, if you are in Christ, … then your name is immortalized forever, because it is written in the Book of Life. As a born-again believer, your precious name is now eternal! ...
Stephen Altrogge writes, “Jesus knows us fully. … He knows every nook and cranny of us. He knows us better than we know ourselves. And He also knows suffering on an intense, personal level. … He meets us in our downcast state and pours out grace upon us.”
I love the fact that El Roi [God] came to Hagar. He sought her out and arrived at the moment of her greatest need. At that moment, it was to be reassured that she was seen, that she was loved and not forgotten, that she and her unborn child (a son whom God named personally; yet another special blessing God showed Hagar) would be cared for.
As “the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,”11 God soothed Hagar’s worries and gave succor to her wounded, weary heart. As with Hagar, God also promises you that He will “never leave you nor forsake you.”12 It is during your greatest times of need that He pours out His grace and mercy upon you.13
He sees exactly what you’re going through, because, to quote Hagar, “You are [El Roi] a God of seeing. Truly, here I have seen Him who looks after me.”14—Denise Kohlmeyer15
Published on Anchor June 2021. Read by Jon Marc.
Music by Michael Dooley.
1 Genesis 16:13.
2 Genesis 16:9–10.
3 Genesis 16:3–4.
4 Genesis 16:5–7.
5 Genesis 16:13 NIV.
6 Romans 8:38–39 NIV.
7 Genesis 16:2, 5–6.
8 Genesis 16:8.
9 John 10:3.
10 Isaiah 49:16.
11 2 Corinthians 1:3.
12 Deuteronomy 31:6.
13 Hebrews 4:14–16.
14 Genesis 16:13.
Copyright © 2024 The Family International