The God Who Sees And Hears

Betsy Santos, Boston, USA 

Read Genesis 16:1-16.

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian slave named Hagar; so she said to Abram, “The Lord has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her.”

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian slave Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my slave in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the Lord judge between you and me.”

“Your slave is in your hands,” Abram said. “Do with her whatever you think best.” Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”

“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered.

Then the angel of the Lord told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”

The angel of the Lord also said to her:

“You are now pregnant
    and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael, [a]
    for the Lord has heard of your misery.
He will be a wild donkey of a man;
    his hand will be against everyone
    and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
    toward all his brothers.”

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.” That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered.

So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

To be seen, to be heard, to be invited to the table, to have our voice heard - It's a longing of our soul. And it's especially strong anytime we face mistreatment or feel overlooked or forgotten. Hagar was objectified and belittled by those she had served faithfully. She was used for what she could produce and then treated harshly after producing the very thing requested of her. She was Mistreated, Unheard, Unseen - Except by God.

While God affirms the pain of her situation, he doesn’t “fix it,” bring “justice” to it, or even make it go away. But he does speak directly to her, even calling her by name, to ensure she knows that He sees her. And being seen by God is all Hagar needed in order to continue faithfully to face the challenges in her life. 

Don’t you wish you could promise yourself and those you love (especially those innocent children in your life) that, with God, no hardship will come? But we all know we can’t. Life is challenging. Following Jesus is challenging. But we can promise each other that God is El-Roi, the God who sees YOU. Consider this familiar passage:

For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:13-16

But many times, the clutter of life and difficult days render our vision of God blurry. I’d love to share two spiritual practices in the hope that they will help you see more of God in your life. 

The first practice is meditation. In Scripture, the Hebrew and Greek terms translated “meditate” or “ponder” appear almost 70 times. Want to see more of God? Meditate on Him more and more! Meditation is simple and easy to do. There are many resources (including the Christian Meditation resource in the ICOC New England app) to guide you. And like anything else, the more you practice it, the better you get at it. The second practice is noticing the presence and work of God in your life. I have a special notebook in which I write down the things for which I am thankful for from the day. All these things reflect the work of God in my life. The more I do it, the easier it becomes to see God.  

I know that many of you are in the thick of a life challenge that is testing you physically, emotionally, and spiritually. I pray that these practices will enable you to say more and more each day “I have now seen the One who sees me.” (Genesis 16:13)

Which practice will you focus on developing in the coming weeks?