El Roi- The God Who Sees

Unseen.

Even in a crowded room.

Surrounded by family or friends.

Busy in life’s crazy hustle and bustle.

Feeling unseen. Like the real you is somehow hiding behind the smiles and fake laughter. Like showing up is just expected and so you do, over and over, but inside, you are falling apart.

Does anyone actually see? Does anyone actually care? Is there anyone that would even bother to try and understand the feelings that are seeping through the cracks of your smiles?

Each step on my journey through this life, there have been seasons of feeling unseen. Overwhelming circumstances and events that tossed me headlong into the deep waters, drowning in all my feels, but one resounding theme has been woven through each stage…

I AM SEEN

El ROI אֵל ראִי The God who sees

From a human standpoint, not a soul could know the pain or the heartache or the anxiety or the doubt or the struggle I was facing. The feelings of being outcast, pushed aside, set aside, cornered, frustrated, useless, unworthy, unloved, unwanted, unseen; all of it was beyond my ability to express or explain to another person.

When you get to that point, no amount of sympathy can help you feel better. Sharing your heart just leaves you feeling worse, because now, you have unloaded your shame on the shoulders of someone else and all it gave you was feelings of more guilt and frustration for opening up when you could have just kept it all inside where it was “safest”.

This is where Hagar found herself. The maidservant of God’s chosen woman, Sarai. God had blessed Sarai and her husband, Abram, with bountiful wealth and protection. He had promised that through them a great nation would come. But, because of unbelief, Sarai came up with a plan to gift her maidservant to her husband in the hopes to expedite God’s promise.

Hagar had no say, but soon after, conceived and became proud of the idea she was carrying a child of Abram. The turmoil that must have overwhelmed her. Her status had not changed. She was still regarded as a slave/servant. She became despised in the eyes of her mistress. Abram did not stand up for her, in fact he gave his wife permission to treat Hagar however she saw fit. No one entered the picture with reasoning or reconciling. There was no one to talk to, no one to lean on. Hagar was alone and unseen, or so she thought.

When it all became too much, Hagar ran.

But God showed up. Isn’t it a beautiful thing!? God made a promise to Abram and Sarai, not to Hagar, but yet, God showed up to her and extended His hand to her and the child she was carrying, to remind her, He is a God who sees, even the most unlikely. Through her line would come a great nation, and the Angel of the Lord would not just show up not once, but twice, to Hagar.

There is so much packed into such a small account recorded of Hagar, and throughout her short story, we experience a side of God that no one ever utters throughout the rest of Scripture. Hagar calls the Angel of the Lord, El Roi, the God who sees. Ishmael, her son, is named “God hears”. The spring of water where God met her that day she called, Beer-lahai-roi, meaning, the well of the living one who sees me.

There is not a day that goes by or a circumstance that comes, that God does not see you! No matter who you are or what you think your importance is in grand scheme of things. God knows you, hears you, sees you. Hagar was but a lowly, Egyptian, slave girl in the household of a major patriarch, Abraham, who was called the friend of God (James 2:23) and yet, God came to her in the very first recording of the Angel of the Lord appearing to man!

God saw her where she was, who she was, and how she was, and He sees us too!

Whatever you are going through, whatever your unseen is, remember, man may not see, understand, hear, sympathize, empathize, but God does! And that is enough!