There’s something about the start of a new year that is both refreshing and yet slightly chaotic. Yes, it’s the start of a new year, which brings a “clean slate” and new hopes, goals, and dreams for the year ahead. But at the same time, January brings with it the busyness, stress, and hustle of life that we briefly left behind when on break for the holidays. Sometimes the pace of life can feel overwhelming. 

Something I’ve noticed recently, is that when life is busy for all of us, and let’s face it – for all of Boston—it can feel as though we get lost in the crowd, lost in the chaos of life. And because life is throwing so much at all of us, it’s easy to wonder if anyone truly has time to see us and care for us when we’re overwhelmed by our schedules, relational tension, or a deep sense of loneliness in a fast-paced city. But take a step back for a minute, and let’s consider an aspect of God, in fact, a name for God that we find for the first time in Genesis 16—El Roi, “the God who sees me.” 

In Genesis 16, we’re introduced to a woman named Hagar, the maid servant of Abraham and Sarai. In chapter 15, we see God promise Abraham that he will have a son through his wife Sarai and that through him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. But here’s the thing: God was talking to an elderly couple at this point. Sarai was in her 70s and Abraham in his 80s. In fact, when Sarai found out what God had promised she literally laughed out loud. Because of her unbelief, Sarai decided to take a shortcut. She asked her husband Abraham to sleep with her servant Hagar so this promise could finally come to fruition.

Hagar sleeps with Abraham and becomes pregnant with a son. But this does not produce in Sarai hope but rather resentment, causing her to treat Hagar so harshly that she flees their household out of fear. We find Hagar in Gen. 16:7 fleeing in fear to the wilderness, and it’s there that God meets her. When he appears to Hagar, he meets her with a promise of hope: “I will greatly multiply your offspring, and they will be too many to count.”

This promise of hope brings Hagar to see God as one who sees her. In verse 13 we read this: “So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” Hagar was deeply fearful of the unexpected circumstances she had been placed into, and understandably so. But in the midst of the wilderness, God saw her and he reminded her that he would provide for her. 

So much beauty exists within the brokenness of Hagar’s story. She was a woman who was despised and rejected, she became an outcast, and was left without hope. But God saw her in the midst of her brokenness and rescued her out of it – both in the immediate sense but also in the promise that he would sovereignty orchestrate the events of her life for greater purposes through her offspring.  

Maybe you feel at times that your brokenness you feel or even just the busyness of the week can overshadow any sense that God deeply cares for you, he sees you, and he wants us to see him as our ultimate provider. Psalm 139:7-12 provides another glimpse of this aspect of God:

7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
    Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
    if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
    if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
    and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
    the night will shine like the day,
    for darkness is as light to you.

Understanding God as the one who sees us reminds us that God both empathizes and provides for his people. Or to put it another way—God is both sovereign and personal, and his sovereignty is played out in personal ways. Hagar’s story not only points to a God who saw her in her greatest need, but a God who saw the spiritual brokenness of each person on earth and chose to enter into it and provide restoration. Hebrews 4:5 reminds us of this in Christ: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.”

Even in his earthly ministry, Christ saw the physical and spiritual pain of people and he intervened. Jesus wept with Mary and Martha over the death of Lazarus, and he raised him from the dead. Jesus encountered those who were outcasts, and he healed them. He healed the sick and lame. He shared meals and spent long amounts of time with those who society had tossed aside. And we see in Matthew 9:6 that when Jesus was preaching to the crowds, “he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus felt a deep emotional, and even physical pain, over the lostness around him. 

Maybe you feel like life is wearing you down, that God is not aware of the things that are weighing on your mind right now. But know that this is simply not true. El Roi is a name that brings hope, ultimately because it points us to love of Christ. He saw us in our most hopeless place and rescued us from our own destruction. But even as we walk with him day by day, he sees us and he restores us just as he did with Hagar. Knowing God as El Roi brings us both peace and joy for today, and a glorious hope for all eternity.