She Named God First: The Forgotten Theology of Hagar and the Neuroscience of Being Seen.

They never tell you that the first person to name God
wasn’t Abraham.
Wasn’t Moses.
Wasn’t even a prophet or priest.
It was a runaway slave girl--
pregnant, alone, and crying in the desert.
Her name was Hagar,
and she didn’t just find God.
She named Him.
El Roi — The God Who Sees Me.
In Hebrew: Hāgār means - “the one who flees.”
Her story begins in someone else’s house.
Used. Blamed. Then sent away.
She runs-pregnant, barefoot, exiled.
Her name means flight, and her body obeys it.
Every cell wired for survival.
Heart racing, breath shallow, eyes scanning for danger.
She is the physiology of abandonment.
And then-
“The angel of the Lord found her by a spring in the wilderness.” (Genesis 16:7)
Found her.
Not in a temple.
In a trauma response.
This is the first divine encounter ever recorded at a well-
the same symbol we’ll later see with the Samaritan woman.
Because the well is where emotion meets revelation,
where the nervous system comes to drink from Living Water.
The angel says,
“Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” (Genesis 16:8)
He calls her by name-
the one thing trauma makes us forget.
When she answers, “I’m fleeing,”
He doesn’t shame the fear; He reframes it.
He speaks to her future before she even finds her footing.
And there, in the desert of disconnection,
she names God El Roi - the God who sees me.
The Hebrew root ra’ah means more than to look.
It means to perceive, to understand, to discern the inner form of a thing.
It’s the difference between being watched and being known.
From a psychological lens, that’s the moment her body shifts.
When we’re unseen, our nervous system stays in survival-
flight, fight, freeze, fawn.
But when we are seen accurately, the body releases safety signals.
The ventral vagal complex comes online.
Breath deepens.
Heart rhythm steadies.
Connection becomes possible again.
Her body shifts from flight-her very name-
to belonging.
That’s what happens when you encounter El Roi.
You don’t just get noticed;
you get regulated.
You remember what it feels like to be home in your own skin.
Later, in Genesis 21, she wanders again-
a single mother watching her son collapse from thirst.
And the text says,
“Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well.”
He didn’t create a new well.
He opened her perception to what had always been there.
Because trauma narrows vision,
and safety restores sight.
The God who sees her helps her see again.
Visibility begets vision.
Hagar’s encounter is the gospel in miniature:
A runaway slave becomes the first woman to name God.
A body once defined by use becomes the vessel of revelation.
And flight-her very identity-becomes the birthplace of belonging.

That’s what happens when Love sees you.
Your nervous system learns a new name.

Be seen and SEE, beloved.

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What happened to Hagar wasn’t just spiritual - it was somatic.
When the angel of the Lord found her by that spring in the wilderness, something divine occurred that modern science is only now learning to name.
Her encounter with El Roi, The God Who Sees Me, re-patterned her entire nervous system.
Because when trauma becomes our language, our body learns to speak in reflexes - not revelation.
“Flight” becomes a biological liturgy: heart pounding, muscles primed, vision tunneled, voice silenced.
It’s the embodiment of un-belonging.
And that’s literally what her name means - Hagar, “the one who flees.”
But then heaven mirrors her.
God doesn’t meet her in a palace or a pulpit; He meets her in her physiology.
In the very posture of running.
And by calling her name - “Hagar, where have you come from, and where are you going?” -
He does what a loving parent or attuned therapist does:
He re-anchors her sense of self.
He co-regulates her.
Psychology calls it accurate mirroring.
Scripture calls it being known.
In that instant, her vagus nerve - the body’s built-in line between heart and face, gut and grace - begins to calm.
Safety signals ripple through her system.
She shifts from survival physiology to social engagement.
In biblical language: from flight to belonging.
That’s what the name El Roi reveals - not just a God who looks at us, but One who regulates us through His gaze.
To be seen accurately is to be restored neurologically.
Later, when she’s lost again and her son is fading of thirst, the text says:
“Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well.” (Genesis 21:19)
That’s neurobiology in sacred poetry.
When safety returns, perception expands.
Her pupils dilate. Her awareness widens.
The resource that was always there comes back into view.
El Roi doesn’t create new wells - He restores our capacity to see them.
He heals the blindness caused by fear.
He makes the invisible visible again, both in our world and within our wiring.
So this story isn’t just about a runaway mother.
It’s about the human nervous system remembering Eden -
the moment the Body realizes it was never meant to flee,
only to belong.
Be seen and SEE, beloved. 🤍