June 6, 2022

The Almost Daily will be on Summer Vacation until August 8th. But fear not! You will receive a devotional each Monday through Friday from the excellent Mockingbird Devotional entitled Daily Grace. Enjoy! - Paul Walker

So [Hagar] named the LORD who spoke to her, “You are El-roi”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” (Genesis 16:13)

She was a runaway. Young, scared, defenseless. As if that weren’t enough, the baby in her belly was fathered by a married old man whose jealous spouse had made her life a living hell. Hagar hadn’t asked for any of this. She was no gold-digger who’d winked her way between some rich old codger’s sheets to woo him away from his wife. In fact, it was his wife’s idea in the first place! Old Sarah told old Abraham to make a baby with her maid because God was dragging his feet about giving them their own promised son. Then, once Hagar was pregnant and started acting a little high and mighty, Sarah conceived disgust for her and eventually impelled her to flee.

It all seems like an episode from Game of Thrones—minus the dragons.

So there was Hagar, on the run, at the end of her rope, in a godforsaken place. In other words, she was in the ideal location for heaven to pay her a visit. “[T]hough the LORD is high, he regards the lowly,” says the poet (Ps 138:6). To paraphrase Luther, the lower down we are, the better God sees us. He sees Hagar. Visits her. Blesses her. And fills her with hope again. So she gives this gracious God a gracious name: El-roi, “the God who sees.”

Hagar, the patron saint of the used-up and thrown-away, is the only person in the Old Testament to name God. She, and the divine name she chose, are vivid reminders that God is never blind to our pain, our shame, our tears. He is the God who sees. He saw Hagar. He sees us, even when it feels like we’re buried so deep in the darkness of depravity, depression, addiction, divorce, or bankruptcy that even divine eyes can’t penetrate the blackness enveloping us.

Hagar was shocked that she remained alive after seeing God. Oh, dear Hagar, it gets even better. When the Lord sees us, we not only remain alive: We are vivified, enlivened, filled with divine life. Because El-roi not only sees us; he loves us into life and hope again.

[Chad Bird, Daily Grace - Mockingbird Devotional Vol. 2]