To the One Who Feels Unseen

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Maybe it’s the bazillion loads of laundry you do each week to keep your family in clean clothes. Or perhaps the food you cook three plus times a day. The late night picking up of the trail left by others on their way to bed. The toilets you scrub. The cookies you bake for the fundraiser. The volunteer hours you put in. You feel unseen-as if no one notices what you do.

Or maybe it is a burden you are carrying. A hurt left by someone else’s actions. A life situation you face daily. A chronic illness. A child with special needs. You feel unseen- as if no one knows what you are going through.

During my read through the Bible earlier this year, I came across a woman I’m sure felt similar. First off, she truly was a slave. Her duty was to do the bidding of her mistress. As such, she was put in a common (for the time) predicament which eventually led to much strife and a desert encounter.

You see, God had promised that he would create a great nation from her mistress’s husband. Yet, Sarai and Abram were old. Not old as in “advanced maternal age” at the ripe age of 35 as the doctors tell it today, but rather old as in well past child bearing age and could have been bouncing great-great grandbabies on her knee. As sometimes happens, there was a period of waiting between when God told Abram he would become a great nation and when God was going to bring that promise to fruition. And as sometimes is the tendency of women and mankind in general, Sarai decided she’d “help” God along with the plan.

Enter Hagar. Hagar was Sarai’s Egyptian handmaiden whom Sarai offered to Abram as a means of producing an heir for Abram and thus the beginning of a great nation. Hagar became pregnant and as could be expected, the relationship between Hagar became more than a little strained.

Hagar ends up running away into the desert where she meets the angel of the Lord and carries on a conversation with him.

^“ ‘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.’ (Genesis 16:8-10)

Two things stick out to me as I read this.

1. The angel of the Lord already knew who she was.

This messenger from God let Hagar know that he knew her situation. He was already aware of her position as a slave and why she had run away. God already knows you and is aware of whatever it is that you are facing.

2. He didn’t say, “Oh you poor thing. It has to be so hard. You deserve something better. Go ahead and take a break for you.” Instead he told her “Go back…and submit.”

 

God didn’t provide Hagar with a charmed life. He sent her straight back to the hard place, the place of enslavement where she would have to do menial labor and face the anger of her mistress. Just because God knows the hard place you are in doesn’t mean that he will take you out of it.

The angel goes on to give Hagar a promise that she will have a son and numerous descendants followed by the news that her son will live at odds with everyone. Not exactly the kind of news an expectant mother wants to hear for her child.

If it had been me, I would have been tempted to curl up in a ball and sob my eyes out. Then I’d have hurled questions of “Why?” or “Haven’t I done what you asked?” But that’s not what Hagar did. Hagar gave God a new name, El Roi which means “the God who sees me.” She praised him in the face of difficult news.

“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.” (Genesis 16:13 bold mine)

If you are feeling unseen, no matter what your situation is today, whether you are knee deep in laundry with the care of your family sitting on your shoulders, you are facing a difficult prognosis, or you are carrying a heavy burden, rest in the knowledge that El Roi, the very One who saw Hagar in her distress sees you. What you do does not go unnoticed by him. The challenges you face are not unknown to him. He is the God who sees you. Draw strength from him, and go back to fulfill your purpose today.

 

I would encourage you to read Hagar’s story for yourself in Genesis 16. You never know what God has to show you when you open his word.

 

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