The One Who Sees Me and a Missing Jetliner

“She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.’ Genesis 16:13

Missing! How do you lose a huge jetliner carrying 239 men, women, and small children in this day and age? With today’s modern technology you can pinpoint any person with a smart phone within two meters. Satellite eyes with high resolution cover the earth capturing nearly constant information. Jetliners are built with a system (ACARS) which automatically sends data on their location and performance in the air, even sending it to the manufacturers of the plane’s engines. Radar tracks large things that fly in the air. Transponders send data from planes as they fly from one point to another. In this case, they were either turned off manually by someone on the plane, or they were destroyed in some cataclysm. At the last agreed upon location of the plane when contact was lost over the Gulf of Thailand the water is so shallow that this plane standing on its tail would stick up far above the surface of the sea. In contrast the Air France Jetliner flying from Brazil to France several years ago crashed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean sinking to the bottom in an undersea mountain range 3900 meters beneath the surface, rather than the average 45 meters in the Gulf of Thailand. Still the Air France crash site was located within two days. We are now at six days in the mysterious disappearance of MH370. No one appears to know yet the location of the plane or its passengers and crew despite 12 countries, 42 ships and 39 aircraft looking constantly for anything related to it.
Someone, however, already knows what happened to Flight MH370. The Bible says God knows everything going on upon the earth. He sees everything, the Scripture declares; even the thoughts and intents of every person’s heart. Absolutely nothing can be hidden from His sight. The entire earth is fully exposed to His observation. Many millenniums ago a woman named Hagar called Him, “the God who sees me. She named the well in the dessert which sustained her life when she fled from Sarah and from Abraham’s household, “Beer Lahai Roi: “well of the Living One who sees me. Nothing, in all the millenniums since, does one iota to change this truth about the One True God; He sees you.
There can be no better theme for your heart and mind in this forty day Season of Lent than to immerse your thought upon grasping and accepting an understanding of God as “the One who sees me; and more fully appreciating what this truth means in your life and relationship with Him. If God sees me, always sees me, and if God knows my heart and the intents of my heart, how ought I to live? How should I consider my sin in light of God’s seeing it? What does earnestly seeking an effective solution for my sin entail? Sin is ruinous to everyone without exception; the guilt of sin can exact such a toll that nothing apart from God’s revealed medicine will assuage the massive weight and pain it brings.
Many, far too many, are apparently dull to the knowledge of personal sin, living and acting with numb consciences; but dullness or numbness does not remove the reality of it. It is still there. The overwhelming shock and cannot-bear-it state comes when the blinders are removed and your undeniable condition is no longer masked by any addicting substance or contrived illusion. (Read Psalm 73) All pain relief eventually wears off and then nothing works, even death.
As you can assume, the truth that God sees me can either be ignored, feared, irritating, or taken to heart as an enormous comfort and an all-encompassing protection. If knowing and living the truth of His eye always upon you sends you fleeing to Christ for sin’s medicine, it’s a good thing. If it keeps you from more sin, it’s a good thing. If it focuses your priorities in life, it’s a good thing. If it shapes your view of the world, it’s a good thing. But if you do not believe God sees you, or your knowledge of who God really is is defective, if you do not see as you look back at Him the mercy and love He has for all those who love His Son, it is no comfort at all.  This Lenten Season come to love this name of God: “the One who sees me. Loving this will bring you to bask in its comfort.