HE SEES ME

Genesis 16 tells the story of Hagar, an Egyptian slave of Abraham and Sarah’s. After years of waiting, Abraham and Sarah chose Hagar to carry out God’s plan of giving them descendants. As they grow older, they begin to lose faith in the promise God gave them. And so, Hagar is chosen to create an heir for Abraham and carry on the family line. However, the situation begins to foster tension between the two women. The situation becomes so hostile that Hagar flees, choosing the unpredictable and unknown wilderness over the volatile environment at home. 

 Eventually, Hagar comes to a stop at a well, and the angel of God speaks to her. He encourages Hagar to go back to her mistress and gives her a message about her future descendants, promising that they would be too numerous for her to count. In this moment, Hagar recognizes how God has provided for her and names Him as “the God who sees me”. This may not seem significant, but Hagar is the first person in the Bible to give God a name, and the intimate nature of it is profound. 

When we think of the kind of person God sees, Hagar is not exactly the image that comes to mind. Hagar is a foreign slave, pregnant with a baby out of wedlock, and running away from her master. In any other circumstance, it would be easy to assume that God would overlook this kind of person or cast them aside. But Hagar’s story shows us that He looks past those things. We often get restricted by the labels and identities that keep us stuck in shame and draw us further away from God.  They leave us thinking, “How could God ever look out for someone like me?” God sees the person you are underneath all of that, and He claims you as His child. 

Ephesians 1:5 says, that God has adopted us into his family through Jesus Christ. God continues to pursue us even in our fallen and broken states. God actively seeks us out when we are far from Him, choosing to see the person that we are and loving us anyway. When we come to God, we don’t need to change ourselves or present ourselves a certain way. God knows who we are, and all we have to do is accept His love for us. It doesn’t matter how far we have run (literally or figuratively) from our problems; God is right there waiting for us to turn back around to Him. Hagar’s problems didn’t immediately disappear with this revelation. She still had to enter back into a situation that was hostile for her and go back into a life of servitude. Although it may have felt like a setback, she knew that God was with her and that He saw her. Sometimes that’s all that we need: to know that our pain is validated and that someone cares about us. Sometimes it gives us enough strength to carry on. Rest in the knowledge that God sees you. 

~Nia Roberts