Thou God, seest me

Her life was complicated by the decisions and mistakes of others as well as her own misjudgment. Even to this day, a few thousand years later, no one names their daughter "Hagar." She is a tragic figure in the Bible, and yet she gives us one of the most beautiful promises to cling to: "Thou God seest me." (Genesis 16:13)

Hagar didn't ask to become Sarai's surrogate, bearing a child with another woman's husband. She was drafted by her mistress, who questioned God's promise to give Abram a child. The situation proved impossible for both women. Sarai resented the intrusion she had invited upon herself, and she felt disrespected by Hagar's attitude. Feeling the sharp pain of harsh anger leveled at her, Hagar eventually fled into the desert, pregnant and alone, where God's angel met her and encouraged her to return with a submissive attitude to Sarai.

Life is not tidy. We are sometimes tempted to look at life's unpleasant situations and ask, "How did you get here?" We look at the difficult marriage, the addiction, the debt, the damaged reputation, the rejection, and myriad other complicated circumstances, and we wonder how the desert became our address.

But God sees us. In a desert, pregnant and alone, with not a friend in the world, Hagar discovered, "Thou God seest me."

Is your address a desert? People fail us, and we fail ourselves. Even Abram--a patriarch of the faith--could not provide a satisfying answer to Hagar's complicated life, but God met her in the desert with His presence and His solution. Your desert is not harder for God than Hagar's. "Thou God seest me."