The God Who Sees Me

Before reading this week’s reflection, I encourage you to slowly read Genesis 16.

The God Who Sees Me

The story of Abram has been filled with extraordinary moments.

The Father called him from his homeland. He spoke to him beneath the stars. He promised descendants beyond number. He walked the blood path and placed Himself behind His promise.

Then Genesis does something unexpected.

It turns our attention away from Abram.

And follows a servant woman into the wilderness.

Her name is Hagar.

Sarai has waited years for the child the Father promised. She is growing older, and still there is no son. So she gives her Egyptian servant Hagar to Abram as a wife.

Modern readers are often quick to stop here and declare that Abram and Sarai have lost faith and decided to accomplish God’s promise themselves.

Perhaps.

But Genesis doesn’t actually say that.

In their world, a barren wife giving her servant to her husband as a wife in order to produce an heir was culturally recognizable. And although the Father had promised Abram that his heir would come from his own body, He had not yet explicitly said that Sarai would be the mother.

So perhaps we should be slower to judge and simply allow Genesis to tell the story.

Hagar conceives.

And almost immediately, things begin to unravel.

Genesis tells us that when Hagar realizes she is pregnant, Sarai becomes despised in her eyes. The servant can suddenly do the one thing her mistress has desperately wanted to do for years.

Sarai responds harshly.

The Hebrew is uncomfortable. The word carries the idea of affliction, oppression, or harsh treatment.

Whatever happened inside those tents, it became unbearable enough that Hagar ran.

Genesis doesn’t give us a hero in this conflict.

Hagar is flawed.

Sarai is flawed.

Abram is flawed.

Sometimes people who genuinely know the Father still hurt one another.

And sometimes we are the ones who get hurt.

Hagar is living inside decisions largely made by people with more power than she has. She didn’t choose Sarai’s barrenness. She didn’t make the promises that had shaped Abram’s household. She didn’t create the longing and tension surrounding an heir.

Yet somehow she finds herself carrying the consequences.

Millions of people know what that feels like.

Sometimes the wounds we carry were caused by decisions we never made. A parent. A spouse. An employer. A church. Someone with authority. Someone we trusted.

Sometimes we contributed to the mess ourselves.

Sometimes we didn’t.

And sometimes the pain becomes so great that all we know to do is run.

Hagar runs into the wilderness.

And then comes one of the most beautiful little sentences in Genesis:

“Now the Angel of the LORD found her by a spring of water in the wilderness...”
— Genesis 16:7

The great story of Abraham and the covenant suddenly leaves the patriarch behind and follows an Egyptian servant woman into the desert.

And the Father goes looking for her.

This shouldn’t surprise us.

When Adam hid among the trees, the Father came asking, “Where are you?”

When Cain stood alone with the blood of his brother crying from the ground, the Father came and spoke to him.

And centuries later, Jesus would describe the same heart:

“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
— Luke 19:10

The Father has always been a seeker.

And now He seeks Hagar.

Then He does something remarkably tender.

He calls her by name.

“Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
— Genesis 16:8

The Father knows exactly where she has come from.

He knows exactly where she is going.

The questions are not for Him.

They are for her.

Hagar can answer the first.

“I am fleeing from the presence of my mistress Sarai.”

But she never answers the second.

Maybe you’ve been there.

You know what hurt you.

You know what you’re trying to escape.

You just don’t know what comes next.

But the Father does.

He tells Hagar to return, and then He speaks an extraordinary promise over her:

“I will multiply your descendants exceedingly, so that they shall not be counted for multitude.”
— Genesis 16:10

Listen to that language.

It sounds remarkably similar to the blessing spoken over Abram.

The Father does not merely keep Hagar alive and send her back to Abram’s household.

He blesses her.

Then He tells her about the child she carries:

“You shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has heard your affliction.”
— Genesis 16:11

The cries Hagar may have believed disappeared into the wilderness had reached the Father.

He heard what happened.

He heard her pain.

He heard her affliction.

And Hagar suddenly realizes something even greater.

The One who found her was not merely a messenger passing along information from a distant God. Genesis tells us plainly:

“Then she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees...”
— Genesis 16:13

The LORD who spoke to her.

Yahweh.

And Hagar gives Him a name born from her own encounter:

Ishmael’s name declares:

The Father hears.

Hagar’s name for God declares:

The Father sees.

And suddenly this little wilderness encounter reveals something enormous about the Father.

We expect Him to pursue Abram.

Abram is the patriarch.

Abram carries the promise.

Abram is the man who stood beneath the stars and watched the Father walk the blood path.

But Hagar?

She’s an Egyptian servant woman running through the wilderness.

The world could easily overlook her.

And centuries later, Scripture gives us a strangely familiar scene.

This time she is a Samaritan, and Jesus meets her beside the water. He knows the parts of her story a stranger could not possibly know. And after encountering Him, she leaves her waterpot behind and runs into the city saying:

“Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did.”
— John 4:29

Hagar had discovered it centuries before.

He sees me.

We shouldn’t miss who these women are.

Neither is a patriarch. Neither possesses great social standing. Neither appears to be someone around whom we would expect God to build an extraordinary encounter.

Yet both walk away as witnesses to something they discovered about Him.

And perhaps that is what someone needs to hear today.

You may have been hurt by someone who should have loved you better.

You may be living with consequences from decisions you never made.

You may even have contributed to the mess and wonder whether that disqualifies you from being pursued by the Father.

Hagar’s story says otherwise.

The Father did not have to choose between loving Abram and seeing the woman Abram’s household had wounded.

He loved Abram.

Maybe you cannot see what the Father is doing right now.

Maybe you don’t know where you’re going.

Maybe all you know is where you’ve come from.

But you have not disappeared from His sight.

The Father hears.

The Father sees.

And sometimes, in the wilderness, we discover something about Him that we could never have learned inside the safety of the tent.

But Father... You Said

Before reading this week’s reflection, I encourage you to slowly read Genesis 15.

But Father... You Said

Abram has just returned from battle. He has rescued Lot, defeated powerful kings, and refused the riches offered by the king of Sodom. Then the Father comes to him:

“Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.”
— Genesis 15:1

We ended our last story with a simple truth: God Himself is the blessing.

Now the Father says it Himself.

Not merely, I will reward you.

I am your reward.

But Abram has a problem.

The Father has promised Abram a future that cannot exist without a son. He has promised to make him a great nation and declared that through him the families of the earth will be blessed.

Yet Abram is growing old, and there is no heir.

To us, that may sound like the understandable sorrow of a man who desperately wants a child. But in Abram’s world, an heir represented something even larger. His name, his household, his inheritance, his story—his future—would continue through his descendants. Without an heir, everything appeared to end with him.

And yet the Father had promised generations.

So Abram does something I find beautiful.

He questions God.

Not with disrespect. Not because he has stopped believing. Abram speaks with what Jewish culture might call chutzpah—a boldness born from relationship, the confidence to press someone because you trust them enough to take their words seriously.

Abram is essentially saying:

Abram can question boldly and believe deeply at the same time. His questions are not the opposite of faith.

And the Father is not offended.

He takes Abram outside.

Imagine standing beneath that night sky more than four thousand years ago. No city lights. No glowing horizon. Nothing to dim the vast expanse above him. Abram looks into a darkness filled with more stars than he could possibly count.

Then the Father says:

“Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them... So shall your descendants be.”
— Genesis 15:5

Nothing about Abram’s circumstances has changed. Sarai is still barren. Abram is still old. There is still no child sleeping in their tent.

But now Abram is looking at the impossible while standing beside the One who promised it.

And Genesis gives us one of the most important sentences in all of Scripture:

“And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.”
— Genesis 15:6

Centuries later, Paul will reach all the way back to this night:

“For what does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.’”
— Romans 4:3

Abram’s questions were not evidence that faith had disappeared. Here was a man with honest questions who placed his trust in the One who spoke.

Then Abram asks again:

“Lord GOD, how shall I know that I will inherit it?”
— Genesis 15:8

Again, the Father does not rebuke him.

He answers.

God tells Abram to bring several animals. Abram cuts them in two and places the pieces opposite one another.

To an ancient reader, the scene carried enormous significance. Covenants were serious things. Walking the blood-soaked path between the pieces was a terrible declaration: If I break my word, may what happened to these animals happen to me.

Abram prepares everything.

And then... nothing.

So he waits.

As the hours pass, birds of prey descend upon the animals, and Abram drives them away. He cannot make God come. He cannot make the fire appear. He cannot make the promise happen. All Abram can do is remain faithful to what the Father has placed before him and wait for the Father to move.

Perhaps Abram had been learning that lesson for years.

A son had been promised.

A land had been promised.

A blessing had been promised.

And still, Abram waited.

Later Scripture will remember this very thing about him:

“And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.”
— Hebrews 6:15

There are few things more difficult than waiting on a promise from God when you have already done everything you know to do.

Waiting did not mean the Father had forgotten.

Eventually the sun disappears, and a deep and dreadful darkness falls over Abram.

Even here, the Father does not offer an easy story.

He tells Abram that his descendants will indeed inherit the promise—but first they will be strangers in another land. They will suffer. They will be oppressed.

The promise is real.

So is the darkness.

The Father never told Abram that blessing meant the absence of suffering. He told him the truth about the road ahead and remained faithful to the destination.

Then, in the darkness, something appears.

Smoke.

Fire.

Throughout Scripture, fire often accompanies the presence of God. Moses will encounter Him in a bush that burns but is not consumed. Israel will see Him descend upon Sinai in fire. A pillar of fire will lead His people through the wilderness.

When fire appears in a divine encounter, it is worth paying attention.

A smoking oven and a burning torch move between the pieces.

But Abram does not.

Abram had asked:

“How shall I know?”

And the Father answers not merely with another promise, but by placing Himself behind the promise.

Centuries later, on another Passover night, Jesus would leave the upper room and cross the Kidron Valley on His way to the garden.

Jerusalem was overflowing with pilgrims, and thousands upon thousands of Passover lambs were being sacrificed. Ancient descriptions of the feast give us a sobering picture of the enormous amount of blood produced by those sacrifices and carried away from the Temple.

Imagine Jesus stepping into the Kidron on His way toward Gethsemane, the water stained with the blood of Passover lambs.

What went through His mind?

Did He remember another blood path?

Another night?

Another covenant?

John would describe Jesus as:

“The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!”
— John 1:29

Long before Bethlehem, Gethsemane, or the cross, Genesis had already shown us something about the Father’s heart.

And eventually, He would bear the cost Himself.

Abram began with questions.

The Father did not silence him.

He took him outside.

He showed him the stars.

He allowed him to wait.

He told him the truth about the darkness.

And then He walked the blood path.

Perhaps there are moments when faith sounds less like quiet certainty and more like a child holding tightly to the Father’s words:

The Father is not threatened by that kind of faith.

The promise has never rested upon our ability to understand how He will accomplish it. It rests upon the character of the One who spoke.

He Called Upon the Name of the LORD

Before reading this week’s reflection, I encourage you to slowly read Genesis 12–14.

As you read, pay attention to a phrase that appears more than once:

“Abram called upon the name of the LORD.”

Listen to this week’s audio reflection:

He Called Upon the Name of the LORD

It is easy to read those words as a simple description of prayer. Abram stopped, built an altar, and worshiped. Yet there is something richer happening here. Abram was not merely speaking privately to God. He was proclaiming the name of Yahweh—announcing His character and making Him known in a land filled with other gods.

That is remarkable when we remember where Abram’s story began.

For decades, Noah and Shem had welcomed him into a home where the Father was known—not merely discussed, but lived. They had not simply taught Abram facts about God. They shared life with him. Abram watched what it looked like to trust the Father, to remember His faithfulness, to listen for His voice, and to walk with Him through ordinary days. Somewhere along the way, the stories became more than stories. Abram came to know the Father for himself.

Now the boy who had listened was becoming a man who would carry that knowledge into the world.

The story begins, as so many stories in Genesis do, with the Father speaking.

“Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said...”
— Genesis 12:7

Before Abram built an altar, the Father appeared. Before Abram called upon His name, the Father spoke.

That has been the pattern from the beginning. God spoke light into darkness. He came looking for Adam in the garden. He spoke to Cain before anger consumed him. He called Noah before the flood. Now He appears to Abram.

The Father always moves first.

Abram responds by building an altar. Certainly sacrifices were associated with altars, but this altar was more than a place of sacrifice. It marked a place of encounter and remembrance. Long after the fire had died and the offering was gone, the stones remained as a quiet testimony:

The Father spoke here.

That idea will echo throughout Scripture. Generations later, after Israel crosses the Jordan, Joshua will pile twelve stones beside the river. When children ask, “What do these stones mean?” their parents are to tell them what the LORD has done. The stones have no power of their own. Their purpose is remembrance. They preserve the story so another generation can know the God who acted there.

Abram’s altar did something similar. It marked a place where Yahweh had appeared, where a promise had been spoken, and where Abram had answered.

Then something unexpected happens.

The Father calls Abram into the land of promise. He promises a blessing that will eventually reach every family of the earth. Abram obeys. He worships. He builds altars. He calls upon the name of Yahweh.

And then a famine comes.

The first thing Abram finds in the land of promise is not abundance. It is hunger.

We often picture Abram and Sarai traveling alone, but Genesis paints a much larger picture. Abram was responsible for servants, shepherds, families, flocks, herds, and possessions. By Genesis 14, he could gather 318 trained men born within his household. Those men represented families and lives of their own. When the land could no longer sustain them, Abram was responsible for far more than his own next meal.

The promise had not changed, but everything Abram could see seemed to contradict it.

Father, You brought us here. Now what?

That question has never really disappeared. We obey, and the road becomes harder. We follow, and provision seems to disappear. We trust, and circumstances appear to contradict the promise.

Genesis does not pretend that the Father’s blessing removes us from a broken world. Abram is blessed, yet famine still comes. Hunger is real. Families still need bread.

Perhaps blessing was never the absence of hardship. Perhaps blessing has always been the presence of the Father.

Abram goes down to Egypt because bread matters. Scripture does not pause to condemn his decision. It simply tells the story of a man trying to preserve the lives entrusted to him while navigating fear, uncertainty, and a foreign king.

And it is difficult not to smile at one detail. Sarai is around seventy-five years old, yet she is still considered so remarkably beautiful that Pharaoh desires her for himself. Genesis has a wonderful way of reminding us that these were not lifeless figures in an ancient painting. They were real people living astonishing lives.

But what begins as a search for bread becomes something far more painful. Sarai is taken into Pharaoh’s house. Abram has left the land the Father promised, and now the woman through whom that promise must continue is in another man’s household. The famine has become more than hunger. Everything Abram has been promised seems suddenly fragile.

Yet the Father remains faithful.

He protects Sarai. He preserves the promise. He does not abandon Abram when the road becomes complicated. Genesis never tells us that the Father withdrew His blessing or reconsidered His call. Abram’s circumstances changed. The Father’s faithfulness did not.

When Abram finally leaves Egypt, Genesis does not merely say that he returned to Bethel. It carefully tells us that he returned:

“to the place of the altar which he had made there at first. And there Abram called on the name of the LORD.”
— Genesis 13:4

He returned to the place of remembrance—the place where Yahweh had appeared, where the Father had spoken.

The altar had remained while Abram was in Egypt.

Its stones still quietly testified to the promise. Famine had come. Egypt had happened. Sarai had been taken. Yet none of those things had erased what the Father had said.

Centuries later, Jesus would stand hungry in another wilderness and answer temptation with the words Moses had given Israel:

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”
— Matthew 4:4

Bread matters. Jesus did not deny hunger, and Genesis does not minimize famine. But bread alone cannot sustain the deepest part of us. Eventually, every journey must return to the Father’s voice.

Abram returned to the altar because it reminded him of what the Father had already said.

Then he continued his journey.

Wherever Abram went, he built altars and called upon the name of Yahweh. He carried the knowledge of the Father into places where the Father was not known. Surrounded by pagan nations, local kings, and people who worshiped gods shaped by human hands, Abram announced another name. He proclaimed the character of the living God who speaks, calls, protects, remembers, and remains faithful.

We are not told how many people listened or how many lives were changed. But the blessing had begun to move outward, just as the Father said it would:

“I will bless you... and you shall be a blessing... and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
— Genesis 12:2–3

The Father never blesses anyone simply for their own sake. He blesses people so His blessing can continue through them.

Noah had received grace and preserved life. Shem had received the stories and preserved the knowledge of God. Now Abram was carrying that inheritance into the nations. What had been lived before his eyes was becoming the life he lived before others.

That makes the closing scene of Genesis 14 especially meaningful.

After rescuing Lot, Abram is met by Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of God Most High. Genesis gives us very little explanation. Melchizedek brings bread and wine, blesses Abram, and receives a tenth of everything.

Ancient Jewish history identifies Melchizedek as Shem, the son of Noah. This is not the place to defend that connection, but if that ancient understanding is true, the scene becomes deeply personal.