Hagar names the One who spoke to her at the well. “You are El-roi,” a name meaning god of seeing. To name something is to give it meaning, ascribing value that is only found in the experience you have with the Other. This is the place where her eyes were opened and so whatever god was there is a god interested in seeing, bringing people to new places where things are colored with new light. Just before this Hagar has bore a son who is named Ishmael, meaning god hears. God hears and God sees. In a very significant way, this is a helpful word. God hears, God sees.
I woke up, wide eyed at 4:12 this morning. Just three hours before, I had laid my head down, eagerly throwing my orange blanket over myself and thinking through the day that had just passed. Days pass faster and faster, I am learning, when I’m not hearing and seeing. Drew and I were talking about distractedness while we enjoyed the porch this morning. It left me wondering if disruption rather than distractedness was a medium God prefers to use in shifting us into new ways of seeing. Eric and I talked last night of a Death Cab song critiquing the idea of telling God your plans. The beautiful thing is, plans, these directing—often themed concepts—that we throw out in front of us, bate reality and invite God to reorient our trajectory. It seems, as soon as you image out loud, the One who hears turns an ear. This attention, characteristic of a good listener, is God entering the conversation with new insight—for this is the One who also sees.
On the refridgerator there is one of those “I feel [blank]” magnets in our house. I reached for a yogurt this morning and moved the selection to lonely. I feel alone with the text this morning and even alone with my thoughts. This is nothing a coffee date can fix or a great conversation might transcend, it is what it is. The hebrew word for alone is transliterated as b ad. Its what the first human felt in Genesis, but I think what I am describing is more nuanced. It is like Hagar having a child and then hearing and seeing a God who is in the disruptive moments of experienced reality. These moments are lonely moments, when we give birth to something—the creative process is one where we feel abandoned, loved and remade in a kind of whirlwind of an embrace.
In someways I wait at a well like that woman in John 4 and like Hagar here. I wait as I ride my bike wandering through town, content yet wanting some disruption in this comfortable space. The other night I rode up to Serria Madre in the dark, as a “midnight bike rider trying to fly.” I looked back as I hit a corner, looking up the hill as it wound away. I was chasing my dreams into what was before me. I was looking back hearing a motorcycle—wishing i could be faster, yet under the street lights echoed by the football stadium’s glow, I settled to go no hands.
