Lynn H. Blackburn

image courtesy of photobucket.com

How do you feel about reruns? I like them. Sometimes I catch things I didn’t see the first time through. I hope you feel the same way because today’s blog is a rerun. This post originally appeared in June of 2010.

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Do you ever think no one knows what your life is like?

Or ever wonder how it is possible to be surrounded by people and still feel lonely?

I do.

And sometimes I get rather grouchy about it. I start thinking that no one should be expected to carry my workload. I fume that I don’t get nearly enough credit for everything I do. My fuming then turns into self-righteous indignation – someone, somewhere, should notice for crying out loud!

I think at a very deep level, all of us want to be noticed. We long to be known. And I’m not sure that in and of itself, the longing is wrong. It becomes wrong when we expect the people around us to fill a hole they can never fill.

There is no husband who can appreciate me enough, no friend who can always be there, no parent/sibling/child who will never leave me.

There is no person on earth who can meet my every need. And no one who can even come close to understanding what my life is like, what my burdens are, what frightens me to the point of tears and what brings me a joy no words can express.

But there is One who can.

El Roi.

The God who Sees.

Oh how I love that particular attribute of my Heavenly Father. When I am scraping puke off a blanket and trying desperately not to throw up, He sees. When I am watching the same episode of Sesame Street for the gazillionth time, He sees. When I have to say no to doing something I would love to do because it’s not the best choice for my kids, He sees. When I see children my daughter’s age doing things my daughter will never do and it breaks my heart but I smile anyway, He sees.

Did you know that the first and only person in the Bible to refer to God as El Roi was a woman? A pregnant slave who felt, and was, all alone. And God revealed Himself to her as the God who Sees.

Sometimes, what I need more than anything else is to remember that the someone, somewhere, who sees me, is the God of the Universe. The One who was, and is, and is to come. The One who has written my story. The One who orders my days. The One who loved me so much, He sent His only Son to die for me.

My El Roi sees me.

And I am never alone.

So she called the name of the LORD who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.” Genesis 16:13 (ESV)