You Matter

Thank you Dot for showing me the following truths:
I recently read a devotional email from my Bible Study teacher, Dot Bowen, about the story of Sarah, Abram, and Hagar. The story is usually focused on Abram and Sarah and a promise kept that ensured generations of God’s people to be born. It’s a great story and it reminds us that God always keeps his promises even when we mess up or attempt to take things into our own hands. Hello, Sarah asking her husband to sleep with the help because she wanted a baby?! Duh, of course she was going to despise her husband, maid, and ultimately herself with a decision like that. BUT… in the end she still got to be a mom. I think the part that really amazed me though was Hagar’s story that Dot pointed out. She had to flee because Sarah hated her and the baby she carried. She was just a young slave that had obeyed her mistress and now she was alone in the desert. And the Bible says God found her and told her what to do in the midst of her crisis. Her response is what struck me; she called out to God and named Him, “the God that sees me.”

It’s all right there in scripture. No fancy language, just simple truth. God will find you because he sees you. Can you imagine sitting in your own circumstance and God, whether you believe in Him or not, comes to your side and says, “Hey, I see You and its going to be ok.” I think we can have the tendency as humans to feel small and be one of trillions with problems. Why would my story or your story matter? And yet a girl, who slept with a very important married man, mattered. We don’t know if Hagar was a believer, all we know is that she was a slave from Egypt. But what we do know is that she recognized that God saw her and I have to believe that changed things for her. Because at the core existence of us all we just want to know we matter despite our sin and ugliness.

Bottom line: We are broken. We make crappy decisions. We get ourselves in messes. And right smack in the middle of the desert we are still noticed. Believer or not, God sees you, because you matter.