Does it surprise you that God permits us, His daughters, to walk through hot fires and deep waters? Scorched terrain that burns our feet and singes our hearts?
There is a particular kind of deep, invisible hurt inflicted through gossip, slander, and cattiness. Sins typically born from the bitter seeds of envy and jealousy.
And as James 3:16 cautions:
For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.
It hurts, doesn’t it? To be the suffering recipient? To watch disorder and vile practices abound? This is an age-old sin pattern, common to women, and fully detailed in Genesis 16.
Sarai grew tired of waiting to conceive, and despite God’s covenantal promise to her husband, Abram, she decided to speed things up, telling her husband to pay a visit to her maidservant, Hagar, to conceive.
Rather than trusting God and His perfect timing, Abram listened to his wife, and Hagar soon found herself with child. The sparks between Sarai and Hagar flew upward. They despised each other and Scripture tells us that Sarai dealt harshly with her Hagar. A servant woman who was at the mercy of her earthly masters. Sarai hatched the idea and planned this conception, and when it was successful, she was jealous of Hagar. How unjust!
Hagar fled to the wilderness, where the angel of the Lord found her and told her to return to her mistress and submit. The angel also tells her she will give birth to a son, Ishmael, which means the LORD has heard and listened to her affliction.
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
And that is how we are graced with this name for God – El Roi–our God who sees.
Are you being sinned against in sneaky ways–quietly slandered, treated harshly, gossiped about, and maligned? Remember that Sarai lashed out because she was consumed by envy. The maidservant had what she most coveted.
And isn’t it interesting that the angel told Hagar to return to her mistress? To the difficulties that likely awaited? We, too, are often kept in hot fires.
The joy comes in knowing that our God sees our afflictions and hears our cries. He is with us and will not forsake us. There is an ordained purpose in the tangled web of life. We may trust God to one day untangle it all. To make straight the crooked.
May we find comfort in our Heavenly Father today. He will handle the evil done against us. He sees and hears everything.