He is the God who sees

I get up at 5:15 on weekdays so that I can work out before I get ready to go to work.  My eyes are not ready for contacts that early in the morning, so I just kind of stumble through the house, half-seeing as I make my way to the elliptical, fill up my water glass, and make my coffee. I’m awake a good hour usually before I ever put my contacts in and can see clearly anything further than about a foot from me.

 

As I can’t see even to watch the television, I listen to podcasts while I’m working out. Right now, I’m listening to a series by Jen Hatmaker. Yesterday morning she was talking to Rachel Held Evans. At one point they were talking about Hagar, the servant of Abraham and Sara who bore Ishmael to Abraham and Sara, essentially as an involuntary surrogate, when Sara could not bear a child. When Hagar and Ishmael were cast out, Hagar cried out to God, naming him as the God who sees. 

 

There are times that the word of God, or the character of God, hits me square in the solar plexus, takes my breath away, and brings me to tears. That happened to me with that description.  

 

He is the God who sees.

I’ve been held back for a lot of years by the thought that I cannot do great things for God because of my past. That I have hampered my ability to be an effective witness. Because if people knew the truth about some of the things from my history, that it would hurt my witness and hurt God. As if I had that power over God. 

He is the God who sees.

He knew the mistakes that I would make before I made them. He knew the things that I would have to endure before I endured them. He knew the wrong paths I would take before I even knew the path existed. He knew it all and still he chose me. Still he chooses me. Each and every day.

 

He is the God who sees.

My pastor sang a song at our women’s retreat this year that has been one I have turned to again and again over these past months. The song says this: 

 

Come out of hiding
You're safe here with Me
There's no need to cover
What I already see

 

You've got your reasons
But I hold your peace
You've been on lock-down
And I hold the key

 

'Cause I loved you before you knew it was love
And I saw it all, still I chose the cross
And you were the one that I was thinking of
When I rose from the grave

If there’s something that is holding you back from doing what you feel God is calling you to do, know that God knows that. And he loves you. With all your baggage. With all your pain. With all your shame. 

He is the God who sees. 

And he loves us just as we are. 

But what about the world? What about what they see? What about what they will think?

It turns out that most people see a lot like I do in the mornings before I put in my contacts. They go through the day and through life only paying half attention and seeing many things in a fuzzy way because they aren’t things that are important to pay attention to. 

 

I’ve had several conversations with different women recently about how most of us live in embarrassment at the cleanliness and neatness of our houses on any given day and how we fear what others will think if they see our houses when they are anything short of company ready. The conclusion that we all came to was that we never really even notice other people’s houses. Or if we do, it’s because we like their wall color or their couch fabric. If we even notice that there may be dust under the couch, or dishes in the sink, or laundry on the dining room table, we don’t care. We certainly don’t judge them because of that. Because, hello, they live there. But for some reason, we don’t give ourselves that same permission. The permission to live in our houses. 

 

The same is true of the mistakes we make in our lives. We tend to judge others far less harshly than we judge ourselves and much less harshly than we think they will judge us. We grant them permission to live in their lives, like in their houses, with the dust of mistakes and the dirty dishes and laundry that have accumulated along the way, without allowing the same thing for ourselves. Without understanding and accepting that most people, at least the ones who really matter to us, will grant the same grace to us that we grant to them. Dust, and dishes, and laundry, and all. 

And if they don’t, then God is big enough to handle that too. Because if he has a plan for you, he certainly isn’t going to let someone else’s judgment of you get in the way of that.  Not any more than he is going to let you be limited by anything other than the shame limits that you place on yourself. He knows what you’ve done. He knows who you are. And he knows what other people will think. And he loves you. With all of that.

 

He is the God who sees.