9 - "The God Who Sees Me...Truly Now I Have Seen" Genesis 16

If we love and trust our God,
it is Enough on this earth.
it is Everything in heaven

And the next verse...I mean, how did Abraham move from the Presence of God, the Promise of God into relying on his own strategy to conceive the child. He believed God. He believed he knew how it could happen.

Sarai put her slave into the arms of her waiting conniving husband. Created a mess in the couple's story. Yet, they all found God in all that enmity and sorrow.  

Hagar ran as hard as she could into the wilderness. It's my default too---flight not fight. I take to the streets. She ran out of the arms of Abraham---ran out of her deep distress, out of her deep sorrow, out of her deep sin. Into the wilderness. And an Angel found her there. 

It was now over a decade ago when I began running from a distress of our own making. And if that Angel had not found me, I wouldn't even be here. I was found alive in the wilderness. And I became enthralled with the God Who Sees Me. I saw Him.

That's what Hagar called Him---she named Him that. An epithet. "The God Who Sees Me." She could never be the same again, even in all of her mess. Me either. She went back to the same situation with Abram and Sarai. Nothing was changed except for her very own life and the child she carried within. Providence was with her. It is a Beautiful Mercy when God stands in the middle of our road like He did with Balaam. He did that for us, bringing us to Austin. It's been an unbelievably good, hard decade here. But we met that Eternal Word in our own wilderness, where it wasn't expected, full of sorrow, full of distress, and it is so much more than we could have ever hoped or expected. Marked forever by The God Who Sees Me! Because, now we see!

“I have now seen[c] the One who sees me.” Genesis 16:13. It was an angel who found the unfaithful servant Hagar and bid her back to where she is supposed to be. Bid us back, Lord. Bid us back. "Where have you come from and where are you going?" Genesis 16:8. Isn't it a good question to ask ourselves this day. Where am I going in the messes I have made for myself. Am I going in faith? I long for the kind of faith that Abraham found as he failed. Failing yet Falling Forward on a very Good God writing a Beautiful Story in the midst of our fall. 

PHOTO:  Chama, Colorado. Population: 60. One Post Office in town. Zipcode: 81126. Elevation: 8,100 feet.