In Want + Plenty by Meredith McDanielSample

Day Three

God Sees

Scripture: Exodus 2:23–25; Ecclesiastes 2:22–23; 2 Timothy 2:13

We all have dreams of what we think life will look like when we grow up, but it turns out a little different in most cases. We have responsibilities that require more of us than we can handle, so we put our head down, work hard. We shove away every ounce of pain we carry and try to ignore it. We deny ourselves the time to really examine the motivation for what we do every day.

Like the writer of Ecclesiastes, we find ourselves asking, “What do people get for all the toil and anxious striving with which they labor under the sun? All their days their work is grief and pain; even at night their minds do not rest. This too is meaningless . . . a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 2:22–23, 26). 

Yet God sees us.

Consider the Israelites, who had been oppressed as a people for hundreds of years. Exodus 2:23–25 tells us: “The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor; and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their difficult labor ascended to God. And God heard their groaning; and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob; and God saw the Israelites; and God knew.”

God saw his people. He knew what they carried. 

God does not owe us the gift of his presence, yet he offers it constantly. We tend to only see the circumstances, and we miss the love he shows us by being with us in our suffering. Even during the daily grind, he is near. He does not abandon us. Even when we try to separate ourselves from him, he remains. 

What difference would it make in your current struggle today if you believed that God was aware of your pain and present with you in it?