The God Who Sees

We didn’t send Christmas cards this year, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Somehow they felt like a symbolic gesture that would make me complicit in all of the lies of the past year, because no matter which pictures we chose, they would not represent the truth.

The truth is that we have learned a lot about what it means to live in exile this year.

A few days ago, I found myself walking around the Old Stone Church site where I noticed a picture on the kiosk of the old sanctuary. At the front, the verse they had inscribed above the chancel was from Genesis 16:13, “Thou God Seest Me.”

I thought that was a strange verse to be the focal point of a church. 

There was a time in my life when I would have believed that this meant that God sees my sin, but that’s not the reference given. The verse quotes Hagar after she was forced to flee from Abraham and Sarah and was in the wilderness, exiled from her community.

It never occurred to me before that those early Methodists needed their own building because they had been exiled from their community. They didn’t leave the Anglican Church to go start something new, they were cast out. 

“Thou God Seest Me,” are words of protest. To stand with a sign and say, “God sees me,” shifts the balance of power. 

This is what Christmas is all about. The Christmas stories found in Matthew and Luke tell us that God was disrupting the power structures the world has always known. 

When we light the Christ candle on Christmas, we remember that God is with us. This is not a warm hug from God, God is with us in our struggles against injustice, against oppression, and against the lies that tear us apart.

Merry Christmas and may the Lord be with you.