Names matter. When we call on God, what do we call him? In a way, our nomenclature for God reveals something about how we perceive and know him. Have you ever given God a name? Members of my extended family gave nicknames to everyone. Mostly these names were descriptive and endearing. This still runs in our family.
After God spoke to Hagar, she named God El Roi . . . the God who sees me. “For I have now seen the God who sees me,” she said. When God found her, she realized that he had seen her plight. In the conversation with the angel of the Lord, she had a sense that she had seen God – the very God who sees her. This name, “El Roi,” gave the well in that location its name for some time afterward. At the time the author wrote, his readers would have known that the well was still there. Then God’s promise came true, and Abram named his son Ishmael.
If you gave God a name, what would it be? Give this some thought. We never fully comprehend God because he is infinite, and we are finite. Nevertheless, we encounter him through his actions in our lives. He is the God who hears, who sees, who cares, who stays, who seeks and finds the lost. How have you encountered him?
God is still El Roi. I like Hagar’s name for God as a starting point. I have known a few Elroy’s in my life, and I have thought that they might have received their names consciously or subconsciously from this story. God sees us because he intends to. He knows our names and our stories. If we stop and look at him, we still see the God who sees us. “I have set the Lord always before me,” wrote the Psalmist (Psalm 16:8). “Fixing our eyes on Jesus,” the writer of Hebrews urges us (Hebrews 12:2).
More, when we see God, he changes us and everything around us. I remember places and times when God seemed so close to me. Those moments changed my life. To quote the narrator, those places are “still there.” And why? Because God is still there, always there. He walks in when the world walks out. Aren’t we glad?
