Genesis 16:13 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.”
She was a slave, a pregnant slave, whose unborn child was fathered by the husband of her mistress. To make matters worse, her barren mistress had engineered the liaison in a desperate attempt to obtain a child for herself. But it didn’t go as planned. Once the slave girl became pregnant, her mistress began mistreating her, forcing her to flee into the desert. Alone, miserable, isolated from all human compassion, Hagar felt invisible. And she probably was to most people.
But she wasn’t invisible to God. Not only did he see her, he spoke words of comfort and gave her vision for the little one in her womb. In grateful response, she called him El Roi— “the God who sees me.”
The God who saw Hagar is the same God who sees us. And it’s no wonder. He made us! He knows everything about us. The Psalmist declares in Psalm 139 such knowledge is too wonderful for him to grasp. “The God who sees” wants us to know we’re not invisible. Not alone. Not without hope.
My son received the diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes a few years after graduating from college. This life-altering news came as a shock to all of us. Suddenly, he was thrust into a whirlwind of eliminating sweets, counting carbs and constantly monitoring his blood sugar. When he called to tell us the news, we at first thought he was calling to thank us for the transfer of money into his checkbook.
Earlier that week, my husband had deposited money for him from an unexpected inheritance. It was enough to completely pay off his school debt. He hadn’t seen it yet, but the timing could not have been more perfect. On the same day he got some of the worst news of his life, he got some of the best. Although the money was monumental, it in and of itself didn’t counter-balance the bad news. The timely deposit made him realize God saw him at that crucial moment and would be with him in days to come.
No matter what you might be experiencing right now, look for the “one who sees you.” You will never be invisible to him.