Lebanon/Syria #1 - El Roi: The God Who Sees
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)
This text came with me on this trip as the basis of a team devotional to offer if given the chance. Today’s visits to two ministries of seeing and vision prompt me to use it for our daily blog. Let me give you some fleshing out of the idea of El Roi from a post I wrote two years ago for Thanksgiving and connect it to our visits:
My sister and I had the privilege today of leading our church’s women's Thursday Bible study. Genesis has been the book chosen, and we had chapter 16. It tells the story of Hagar and the birth of her son Ishmael and all that surrounded that blessing of a son to her. There are justice issues. Examples of sins of omission and commission. There are cultural differences, and like much of the biblical narrative, stories of journey.
Here was my takeaway: Hagar names her son Ishmael, God hears. And Hagar gives God a new name: El Roi, the God who sees.
As we wrestled with the text, we could all come up with examples of where God has heard us and when we have known that he sees us.
He heard my prayer as my sister had a quiet seizure ten minutes before we were to begin. He saw my distress as I worried for her dignity. He guided us out, and he brought us back. Hagar's story is our story.
This is the truth I know in my own life. He hears my cries. He sees the things I weep for. He meets me in those places and gives me hope. He surrounds me with a cloud of witnesses who add to that story of faithfulness.
We spent precious hours today with Blessed School and the Home of Hope, two ministries under the umbrella of the Lebanese Evangelical Society, a mission with more than 150 years of history, leaning into the vision God has given them to serve the least of these – the historically unseen – of Lebanon. Linda Maktaby is the director or acting director of both, and Tony Haddad is the executive director of LES, Linda’s boss.
They lavish the love of God on children and young people placed in their care by the courts. At Blessed School, these children are on the autism spectrum or mentally disabled in some way. With all the other stresses of living in Lebanon in 2021, they are often more than a family can handle with limited resources. They are not “unseen” at Blessed, a school originally developed as a school for the blind. They have small classes, even one-to-one time, with teachers and caregivers who see them for who they are: children of God. As Tony says, “They not only have lives (bodies), they have souls.” Currently, they are caring for 24 children, 16 of whom live on the premises.
At the Home of Hope, they also serve these unseen children. These children have been placed by the court for reasons of trauma, abuse, or abandonment. Many have come from the streets, but at the Home of Hope, they are being taught about what “home” really means. In a building once used as a home for the elderly, they have been invited to envision what they want their home to look like. We were invited to see new spaces opening up for them in this building that will have their design inspirations. They are not being told what to expect from an institution, they are being asked what home should look like. There are 21 young people here full-time, fifteen boys and six girls.
The balance in these two places of caring for minors who will one day be released into the world is how to love and care for them here and now, and give them the skills and opportunities to not only exist once they leave but to blossom and pass on the love they have received. Jesus is in the midst of finding that balance. Just as God met Hagar in the wilderness and saw her, Jesus sees these children in their desert place and frees them through the love and the vision of Linda, Tony, and their amazing staff.
Linda and Tony are cut from the same cloth, imbued with a vision for what can be, and eyesight to see those the vision is for. They have created lighthouses in a dark place and dark time, and allow us to see how God has used them. That light shines brightly and our eyes are wide open to the promise.
The Outreach Foundation has partnered with them in both places to provide needed repairs after the port blast last year (Blessed School) and the tools to upgrade an old institution into a home (Home of Hope). It is a privilege to stand in the midst of it all and see how God uses what we release from our hands.
Tony circled back to vision and seeing as we left them in the early afternoon as he thanked us for coming. “You not only cross the sea, you see the cross.”
by Julie Burgess, West Hills Church, Omaha, Nebraska