Our God Who Sees
In elementary school, I was the kid who got picked on. I don’t remember why, but it could have been that I was easy to pick on. I didn’t have the smart comebacks the other kids would say. I was rather shy and awkward. It wasn’t fun feeling slighted by those I should be getting along with. Many times I’d come home glad that the school day was over. Can anybody relate? Have you faced a situation that made you feel this way? I’m sure we all have, at one time, been insulted or not treated with kindness. It’s part of life.
Someone else back in the time of Abraham went through a similar situation. In Genesis 16, we come across Hagar. She is a servant to Sarai (before her name changed to Sarah). Hagar is given to Abram (before he became Abraham) as a wife to bear children for the couple because Sarai could not conceive. Hagar becomes pregnant, and this is where her trouble begins. She and Sarai do not get along, and Sarai, in verse 6, begins to deal harshly with Hagar. The verb for harshly in Hebrew means to oppress or afflict. Sarai was mistreating Hagar to the point that Hagar runs away. The angel of the Lord, or in other words, God himself, finds her and asks her two questions. Where did you come from, and where are you going? Hagar tells the angel of the Lord what has happened. God instructs her to go back to Sarai, and He reassures her that through this child she was carrying, a great nation would come. I’m not sure when Hagar realized that she was talking with God, but she calls God by the name El Roi or the God who sees.
El Roi saw Hagar that day. He saw the situation she was in. I’m sure that gave her comfort. She wasn’t alone. God was watching over her. She didn’t need to run from her circumstances but trust that God would take care of her as well. God sees your situation too. He sees when you are being insulted or mocked and sees that you once again didn’t get the job you wanted. He sees it all. I hope that brings comfort to you as it does me. What this means is we have God in our corner. He is on our side. So my friends, if he is on our side, why do we run? Hagar was running from her circumstances. Are you doing the same? God told Hagar to stop running and do what was right, which meant to go back to Sarah. It may not be what she wanted to do, but she did go back. What God said about the nation that would come from this child did come true. The Arab countries we have today are descendants of her son Ishmael.
Instead of running from school when someone picked on me, I stayed and managed. Ignoring people who pick on you does work. Next time we feel like running, let’s run to the God who sees us in our circumstances and has the answers we are seeking, and then we can do the right thing.