“Maybe my seemingly unproductive, looking-up-at-Him life produces awe among the angels.” Sara Hagerty
When Instagram is our lookbook and Facebook is our black book, it can seem like significance comes from being seen and being known. And the clamour of us all trying to be seen and to find significance is deafening.
Sara Hagerty says in her book Unseen: the gift of being hidden in a world that loves to be noticed that it’s in the hidden places where we find lasting significance.
“Every heart longs to be seen and understood,” she writes. “Yet most of our life is unwitnessed. We spend our days working, driving, parenting. We sometimes spend whole seasons feeling unnoticed and unappreciated. So how do we find contentment when we feel so hidden?”
This, Sara believes, is exactly how God intended it to be. “He is the only One who truly knows us. He is the only One who understands the value of the unseen in our lives,” she writes. “When this truth seeps into our souls, we realize that only when we hide in God can we give ourselves to others in true freedom—and know the joy of a deeper relationship with the God who sees us.”
Despite the fact that our culture “applauds what we can produce, what we can show, what we can upload to social media,” Sara believes that it’s “only when we give all of ourselves to God—unedited, abandoned, apparently wasteful in its lack of productivity—can we live out who God created us to be,” – only here can we find true and lasting significance.
“God is in the secret places of our lives that no one else witnesses. But we’ve not been relegated to these places. We’ve been invited. We may be “wasting” ourselves in a hidden corner today: The cubicle on the fourth floor. The hospital bedside of an elderly parent. The laundry room. But these are the places God uses to meet us with a radical love. These are the places that produce the kind of unhinged love in us that gives everything at His feet, whether or not anyone else ever proclaims our name, whether or not anyone else ever sees.” Whether or not the world around us sees and acknowledges our significance.
“God’s invitation is not just for a season or a day. It is the question of our lives: “When no one else applauds you when it makes no sense when you see no results—will you waste your love on Me?”
Will you find your significance in Me?