He Sees You

I remember one hot, summer night when my husband asked me to come outside and star gaze with him. As we laid out on our deck I remember looking up at the canopy that hung over us--a perfect midnight blue sky with millions of sparkling stars. I remember feeling so small in that moment.

It's easy to feel small and insignificant in such a big, fast paced world filled with so many hard, trying moments. I've lived through times of feeling betrayed by friends or consumed by my own failure. I remember a time being so weak from despair I had no other option but to collapse into a soggy pile on my closet floor drowning in a lake of my own tears. I have seen friends die, families fall apart, spouses betray each other. I have seen far too many people living in this world feeling all alone and invisible while the rest of the world seems to thrive around them.

When engrossed in these moments, it is often hard to comprehend that God cares. Especially when I look around at people whose lives seem to be going great. Those times when I'm feeling crushed in a valley while I watch people flourish on their mountain tops--it's easy to wonder 'Does God even see me down here? How can He be with me here when He's clearly with them up there?'

I was reading about Sarah and Hagar in Genesis the other day. Here are two ladies in very different positions in life. Sarah was the wife of Abraham. She had control to do what she wished with her servant. She was married. She was promised a son. She was in a much higher place of authority and power than Hagar.

Hagar was all alone. Pregnant. A servant. Out in the wilderness with no promise of a future. No plan to prosper. Just despair on her horizon.

And yet. The same God that fashioned the stars in the night sky saw and heard them both. He was able to be with Sarah in her place of authority and Hagar in her time of struggle.

When Hagar felt like not a soul on the planet cared, the God of the universe sought her out. He called her out of a dead end in the wilderness. He promised her generations. He became her soft place to land and her steady rock to hold because He was there when no one else was. He was all she needed. She called Him 'El Roi'--'you are the God who sees me.'

And He sees you. Right where you are. Whether on the peak of your mountain, or in the hollow of your valley, or somewhere in the middle. He cannot be contained to just one space or time. He is bigger than the sky that hovers over the mountains and the foothills. He is a God who sees and hears our deepest, painful groans in the middle of a lonely night and He laughs and smiles with us on those days we are swept up in the breeze of joy. He is grieving with the family who is watching a loved one pass away while rejoicing with the family welcoming a new baby into the world.

He is great enough to hold all of it in His gentle hands. He wants you to know you are not alone. He will seek you out in the wilderness so that you will feel the weightlessness of being seen and heard. And he will dance with you in all the beautiful, breathtaking moments because He desires to just be with you.

So the next time you look up at the night sky and feel the smallness of who you are--

Rest in the knowledge that the same God that hung those stars has climbed down into your life.

He is big enough to reach the corners of the earth and the crevices of your heart.

He saw a lonely, pregnant, servant girl out in the wilderness.

And today, right where you are,

He sees you.