Reflections on the annual watchword by Volker Martin Dally

Volker Martin Dally, UEM General Secretary, Photo: Martina Pauly / UEM

For heaven's sake, I thought at first when I heard about the decision for the 2023 annual watchword. "You are a God who sees me." Why on earth was I actually frightened at first?

Without the context of the verse from the first book of Moses, the words of the sentence reminded me of my childhood, more precisely of the time of Sunday school, in which we quite often, quite enthusiastically sang a song about God seeing me: "Watch out little hand what you do," the song is called, and it continues with the words: "for the Father in heaven looks down on you, therefore watch out little hand what you do."

Coupled with the children's prayer, "Dear God make me,13 fear you, that I may go to heaven," the song and the idea that God, as the over-educator so to speak, will watch all my action and reward or punish me accordingly, even guard my entrance into heaven with it, has created fear of God. Big brother is watching you.

The idea of a loving, protecting and life accompanying God was not encouraged in this way.

But it is exactly this God that the year's watchword is about. Therefore it is important for me to consider the context in which the verse is written: "You are a God who sees me. (Genesis 16:13)

The Bible verse of the 2023 annual watchword refers to a dramatic story. It is about the married couple Abraham and Sarah. Sarah is barren and therefore asks her husband to have a child with the maid Hagar. It was hardly to be expected otherwise, the pregnancy leads then nevertheless to a violent conflict between the women. They humiliate each other and despise each other deeply, although initially it was planned together.

For Hagar, the situation seems increasingly hopeless. Finally it becomes too much for Hagar and she flees. In a completely desperate situation, pregnant, alone, homeless and without perspective, Hagar is saved from nowhere. Homeless and lonely, she runs to a water source in the desert. There she meets an angel who advises her to return to Abraham and Sarah. The angel predicts that Hagar will have so many descendants that "they cannot be counted because of the great multitude."

Hagar prays to God at the water source and states, "You are a God who sees me."

A very different context in which Hagar speaks of seeing God than was taught to me in childhood. For Hagar, it is a saving seeing. In her distress she experiences that God does not leave her alone, that God protects her and accompanies her in her life.

It is not a matter of a scrutinizing observation in the sense of Big Brother is watching you, but of being seen in a positive sense. This is what Hagar experiences there: that she is seen as a woman in her completely threatened existence. And is saved.

The 2023 annual watchword thus addresses a situation with which we are confronted every day: Flight and expulsion. Read more.

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