Hagar has been cast out by Abraham and Sarah, pregnant and alone in the wilderness. An angel finds her and promises she'll have a son. Her response: she names God 'El Roi' - the God who sees me.
I was a nanny for five years, undocumented for two of them. Nobody was looking for me. My employers didn't know my actual circumstances, my church community didn't know I was vulnerable, my family back home thought I had the stable situation I'd claimed. I was invisible to everyone.
In that loneliness, I found Hagar. This enslaved woman who had been used for another woman's purpose, discarded when she became inconvenient - she experienced God's attention. Not sympathy from a distance, but recognition. Someone saw. That verse became my prayer. 'God, you see me. You see this situation that nobody else is paying attention to.' And things shifted. Not immediately, not dramatically. But I was no longer invisible. That awareness changed everything.
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