1.Mose 16, 13
Text: Dieter Herren, 60 years old, emergency care expert NDS HF, Thomaskirche Basel (CH)
Thoughts on the annual motto
This motto for the year really spoke to me the first time I read it and it continues to do so every time I deal with this verse.
Now I was asked to write something about it on a Sunday in September before our church service and it started with the following song:
Dear God, you hear my song...
Dear God, you see me too!
Dear God, you see me too!
And that's why I sing now: Hallelujah!
Dear God, you see me too!
Dear God, you love me...
Dear God, you are the greatest...
Dear God, you are the strongest
(Andreas Manig)
This story of Hagar touches me, how carefully God treats individual people, even how lovingly! And in great distress and desperation at the end of the world, in the desert: Hagar is at the end, she finds a well there but she doesn't know what to do next. Then God turns to her and she realizes: You are a God who sees me! This care gives confidence and hope; things continue in this hopeless situation.
This is not “big brother is watching you”, but attention, attention from the Lord and Creator of the world to you and me, his creatures, even his children!
Look how great the love the Father has shown us is: we can call ourselves children of God, and we actually are!
1 John 3:1a
Psalm 139 also reports such affection:
1 By David. A psalm. LORD, you have searched me and know me very well.
2 When I sit down or stand up, you know it; You know my intentions in advance. 3 Whether I walk or lie down, you see; you are familiar with all my ways. 4 Yea, even before a word comes out of my lips, you already know it, O LORD.
5 You surround me on every side and lay your hand on me. 6 This knowledge is an incomprehensible wonder to me; too high for me to ever understand...
And further:
... 16 Your eyes saw me when my life came into being in my mother's womb. All the days yet to come were written in your book before any of them arrived.
God our Father in heaven sees you and me, all people in every place and in every situation, our becoming in the mother's womb, and he turns to us, carefully and lovingly. Every Sunday at the end of the service we are promised this again and again; With God's blessing we are released into the coming week. The Aaronic blessing is often said there and there too I meet the God who sees me:
The lord bless you and take care of you! May the LORD make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you! May the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace!
Numbers 6:24+25
Yes, his face lights up when he looks at us; God himself turns to us, he wants to meet you and me and give us his peace; Peace with him, peace with ourselves and peace with the people around us. Where God looks at us, turns to us and gives us peace, all things fall into place and we rest with him. Everything comes from him, the God who sees us.
Hagar experienced this in the desert in great distress and abandonment. This changed everything for her, even though she was still alone and in the desert. I experienced this for myself at the end of last year; not in the desert and not alone or in great distress, but at my workplace in the emergency center in the hospital. The stress and strain at work keep getting bigger and I get tired and dissatisfied, what I do is never enough and when there are already a lot of people there, there are always more people coming; The end is then only in sight at the end of the shift. During this time I realized that I wasn't going there alone, God also saw me in stress at work and he turned to me. I used prayer in a church service. The change that I then experienced impressed me: the workplace is still the emergency room, the workload is still heavy on many days and yet everything was different, I am in this place, safe in peace from the God who sees me; That changes me, it changes the way I meet people at work and it does me really good. I want to consciously use this again and again, for every working day. Our Father in heaven is the God who sees me, I want to pay attention to this in everyday life and always meet the one who turns to me and gives me his peace.
Dieter Herren
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