Do you believe that God is there in the mess, there when we are in the middle of the chaos, not just there when we turn to Him and some of the chaos starts to get sorted?
This question got me thinking about a woman in the Bible called Hagar. We are going back to a very different time and place and culture, to about four thousand years ago, two thousand years before the time of Jesus even! Hagar was an enslaved Egyptian woman in the Old Testament, and the fact is … she had been abused. Her life was in chaos at this point. She had given birth to a child and had run away and was hiding in the wilderness. In the Bible passage about this, the message that pushes through is that God really desires to be known personally. Known by her, known by us.
He speaks to Hagar about her son and what his name will be, and in response, she does something amazing …she gives God Himself a name.
He has made her feel more special than anyone had ever done before and she names God, ‘El Roi’, which means, ‘the God who sees me’. It is the greatest discovery of Hagar’s life and anyone’s life to this day. God hears….me; God sees….me!
It is breathtakingly beautiful, I think, that the first person in Scripture to give God a name is not a prophet nor a priest, nor a King, but rather an enslaved, abused woman. Hagar is afforded the honour of giving the Living God a name and what a personal, intimate name she chooses: El Roi, the God who sees me!
Much later, when we meet Jesus in the New Testament, we see this same God incarnate; God, ‘with skin on’! Broken people, who had encounters with Jesus, knew that they were heard and seen and loved by God. Knew that they were fully known in the midst of the mess and yet fully loved!
And I reckon that is what we long and hunger for more than anything else … to be fully known and yet fully loved.
I do know that we also fear being fully known … but as Hagar discovered, it is very important to be known. When we become followers of Jesus, we find He is the One to whom we can tell the secret of who we truly and fully are. Jesus is the safe One! Have I just given Him another name?
I love a song called ‘The God who Stays’. God is given a wonderful name here too; He is the One who stays when the whole world walks away!
In fact, He is the One who runs in my direction when the whole world walks away. Yes, He is the safe One!
When you think about what moves you most in your relationship with God, what name would you give to Him?
Julie
Julie is a retired teacher and one of our Operations Assistants.