Encountering the God who sees
Last month we took a family trip to Denver, Colorado, to visit my sister and her family who live out here…
Still in a fog of jet lag after landing on the Saturday evening, then waking up super early the next morning (because of the 7hrs time difference we were trying to navigate!) we downed a couple of strong coffees, had breakfast, rounded up all the family, and then headed to my sister’s church in Arvada.
And do you know what? The weirdest thing happened while I was there.
At the end of the service, a total stranger walked up to me, introduced herself and bravely asked about me and if I had any kids.
Yes, ‘We have one son’ I replied. ‘Oh you do?’ she continued… ‘Because I felt like God was speaking to me about you during the service and showing me that there was perhaps some unfulfilled longings in your heart, in the area of motherhood or family. Or maybe some unresolved area of grief… ‘
Wow. I said, slightly taken aback. Yes both! I went onto explain that although I do have a son, I’ve also had multiple miscarriages, and that since then and we’ve not been able to have any more children.
She offered to pray for me right there and then, and continued to share how she felt very strongly that God wanted me to know that He sees and cares about my grief.
Isn’t that incredible?! I was literally 4581 miles away from home, in a completely different continent and time zone… and yet I heard almost exactly the same encouragement as I’d heard in my own church in Liverpool just a couple of weeks before we left.
The timing of all this hasn’t been something that has escaped by notice either - since that week marked the first anniversary of our most recent pregnancy loss as well. It was as if God was sending me the encouragement just when I needed it the most.
As it says in my favourite Psalm in the Bible, which is Psalm 139:
“If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.”
Sometimes it can feel like we’re just barely clinging onto God in our pain or our disappointment, can’t it? But the truth in this passage, and that I encountered again in the midst of this experience, is that God sees every detail of our lives, and He holds us more tightly than we could know.
And to be honest, this is not a one-off message either; the idea of God seeing me is one that I have just kept on bumping into again and again along this fertility journey I’ve been on. In podcasts, in talks, in conversations with friends and strangers - and yes, even in divine encounters like this.
So much so, that ‘El Roi’ - which is a Hebrew name for God referred to in the Bible, meaning ‘the God who sees me’ - is something that I now have tattooed on my wrist.
I carry it with me as a small physical reminder that despite all of those times where I’ve found myself wondering whether God really sees or knows or cares what is happening to me and my family - that yes, He is really is the God who sees.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with the story of Hagar in the Bible, which is where this concept originates from, she was a young Egyptian slave girl who’s story unfolds in Genesis chapters 16-21.
As a brief summary, she finds herself cruelly mistreated by Abraham and his wife Sarah, who was barren and became enraged with jealousy towards her, after she is forced into a sort of surrogate pregnancy for the couple. Eventually, she is forced to flee into the desert for safety and to spare the life of her baby.
So Hagar was also undoubtedly someone who knew what it was to feel overlooked by God in the midst of her struggles. She was an unmarried woman with no status, no financial means, no legal rights, and no personal agency in the culture and context that she was living in at all. Her situation left her destitute. She had nothing.
But God. God met her there, in that barren wilderness space. He spoke to her, calling her by her name - and that single encounter of being seen and known by God changed everything for her, just as it has for me.
God saw Hagar not as a slave girl, the property of someone else; but as a woman with an intrinsic value - as someone worth pursuing, and granting great dignity to. And in response to God’s kindness towards her, Hagar refers to the Lord as ‘El Roi’ meaning ‘the One who sees me’ (Genesis 16:13).
‘I have now seen the One who sees me’ she says. Isn’t that incredible? In fact, Hagar is the only person in the entire Bible who gets to personally name God in that way, as opposed to just encountering a God who announces His name.
I know that so many of us face shattered dreams in our own lives in different ways, and that at times we can also find ourselves asking, ‘Does God see me?, Does He notice what’s happening here? Does He really care about my situation at all?’
These are certainly all questions I have found myself asking at many points over the past few years. But in Hagar’s story, perhaps more than any other place in scripture, I find the reassurance that, yes, God really does see my pain and my struggle.
And that same God who saw Hagar in her wilderness journey thousands of years ago, saw me in my journey to America last month too. He is still El Roi – the One who sees all things, and holds all things together, and can be trusted with all things – even in those times when you feel unseen.
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