El Roi. The God who sees. It is the name Hagar gave to God in the wilderness when she believed she and her child were utterly alone. It is the name that anchors everything we do at Daybreak House.

There is a particular kind of loneliness that belongs to a baby who has been left. We do not fully understand it – how could we? But we believe, with everything in us, that it is not the whole story. Because there is a God who saw Hagar in the desert. And He sees every child who arrives at our door.

I have been sitting with Genesis 16 this week. The story is uncomfortable. Hagar is mistreated, she flees, and she is alone in the wilderness with a child who has no future she can see. And yet an angel finds her. Not to fix everything instantly. But to say: I see you. I know where you have been, and I know where you are going.

That is what our team does, in their own human way. When a baby arrives – sometimes unexpectedly, sometimes with nothing but the clothes they were found in – the first thing that happens is that someone holds them. Looks at them. Says, without words: I see you. You are here. You are not alone.

I wonder sometimes what it would mean for our donors and supporters to carry this name into their own lives. El Roi. The God who sees. When you give to Daybreak House, you are participating in an act of being seen. You are saying to a child you will probably never meet: your life matters enough that I noticed it.

That is not a small thing. In a world that often looks away from the uncomfortable and the inconvenient, the act of turning toward is one of profound courage and faith.

You are the God who sees me, for I have now seen the One who sees me.

Lord, make us people who see. Who notice the child the world has overlooked. Who turn toward the uncomfortable rather than away. Let every baby at Daybreak House know, in whatever way a baby can know anything, that they are seen. That they are known. That they are not alone. Amen.