Dear Friends,
It is a hard world out there and there are all kinds of pitfalls just waiting to trip a believer up. Is there any comfort in such a world? Today’s devotional gives a precious one. God bless you.

Because of Calvary,
John Janney

• Genesis 16:13 (ESV)

  13 So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”

“We often use those words, ‘Thou God seest me,’ as words to warn ourselves and others from temptation and sin, meaning that even if no one else sees or knows, God always sees us. All that is true; but that is not the way in which those words were first used. The handmaiden of Abraham, Hagar, had been driven out from Abraham’s home by the jealousy and anger of the barren Sarah. The unfortunate girl lay there in despair in a lonely place in the wilderness. But it was there that the angel of the Lord came to speak to her and to comfort her and cheer her, and to tell her of the coming birth of Ishmael. So moved and so grateful was Hagar, that she called the name of that place where God spake to her, ‘Thou God seest me.’ ‘For,’ she said, ‘I also here looked after Him that seeth me.’ And the well by which she was resting when the angel appeared unto her was called, ‘Beer-lahai-roi,’ which means, ‘the well of the Living One who seeth me.’ Never forget that in the desert of your sorrow is the refreshing well of the presence and comfort of God. ‘Thou God seeth me.'” [Clarence Edward Macartney, Facing Life and Getting the Best of It, (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1940), p. 104-105]