El Roi

You know when I sit and when I rise;

You perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down;

You are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue

You know it completely, O LORD. (Psalm 139:2-4) 

     

     One of the reasons I love this psalm so much is because it somehow seems more personal than most of the rest of Scripture. It seems to me that often, Scripture is God's Word to us. We're just the big herd of sheep, and this ewe is just one of millions, unknown otherwise. We matter. I don't.  This psalm not only doesn't suggest that idea; it rejects the idea forcefully.  

      One day as I meditated on this passage, an image came to mind of God sitting on His throne, going about His business, doing whatever it is God does on His throne (Have you ever considered what God does on His throne?) when suddenly, He raises a finger and says, "Wait! Karen is thinking a thought. I want to hear it." Of course, God being God, being omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent, doesn't have to stop to hear what I'm thinking. He is capable of perceiving everyone's thoughts from afar all at once. I am certainly not the center of His universe. But it says, "You perceive my thoughts from afar." He hears them, individually, not merely as part of a cacophony of voices.

       It says that God knows when I sit and when I stand, when you sit and when you stand. He discerns our comings and goings. He is familiar with all our way. He knows that I usually get up around 6 and walk and pray. He knows lunch is at 11 and dinner at 4. Before I say anything, He knows what I'm going to say, and He listens anyway! (Those of us who have been told the same story - whatever our version of "When I was your age, I walked 7 miles to school through 5 feet of snow, uphill both ways" is - can understand how gracious this is.)

        This God who knows, this is Hagar's El Roi, the "God who sees." Hagar was a poor slave girl of a rich master in a foreign land, forced to act as surrogate mother for Sarai. Whether she got haughty, or Sarai just perceived her as being haughty, Hagar fled to escape the abuse (Genesis 16). She met God, and this was her impression of Him. He was the God who saw her. He is the God who sees you, too.