A Word About Unseen

I’ve been thinking lately about what it feels like to be… unseen.
Not ignored, exactly. Not rejected. Just kind of … invisible.

Maybe you’ve had that kind of day, or season in your life, too.
It may feel like the world is moving faster than you are. The noise of living life in your world is louder than you prefer? Perhaps, those around you seem convinced that what you have to say doesn’t matter much anymore. 

You show up. You smile. You nod at the right places in conversations. But there’s a gnawing sense that somehow—despite all that—no one really sees you. Not in that soul-level kind of way. Not where it counts.

The barista takes your order without eye contact.
The doctor reads your chart more than your face.
Younger voices seem to take up all the air and space in the room. And you start to wonder: have I become part of the wallpaper?

It can be a strange and unique feeling, to feel unseen.
But it’s not a new one.

There’s a woman in the Bible in Genesis chapter 16 who knew that kind of ache.
Hagar. A servant. A castaway, who felt used and then discarded when things got complicated.
She ran away into the wilderness, pregnant, alone, and convinced no one knew. No one cared. No one saw her.

But Someone did.

In the middle of her emptiness, she heard a voice that wasn’t trying to fix her, or use her, or silence her. Just a voice connected to the God who saw her.

And she gave the God who was speaking that name, right there in the desert.
She called Him El Roi —“The God who sees me.”
Not the God who sees us, or them. The God who sees Me.

That one verse in Genesis 16 is the only place in the bible where God is specifically named El Roi. And it wasn’t a king, or prophet, or priest who referred to God as “The God who sees me.”
It was a discarded, invisible woman who discovered one of the most comforting personal truths in all of Scripture.  On days when I may feel particularly invisible, during seasons when feelings of anonymity or pain creep into the crevasses if my life, I can look into the face of God and be assured that He is El Roi, the God Who Sees Me.

You may walk through a grocery store, or a sanctuary lobby, or even a family gathering, and still feel like a see-through piece of plastic wrap. Un-noticed and invisible. 

But El Roi — The God Who Sees Me is noticing.

In a world that often worships what’s loud, fast, young, or shiny…
He honors what’s hidden, slow, faithful, and unseen to all but Him. I need to remind myself: I serve The God who not only sees us, or them. I serve the God who sees Me.

God does some of His best work in my life when He’s the only one who seems to be noticing me.