Every morning of my life I have carried water before anything else happens.
It is not interesting. There is no version of it that is interesting. It is the same trough, the same distance, in whatever weather is available, and it takes about twenty minutes and it has never once been remarked upon by any living creature on this farm.
Deacon Wattles has opinions about a great many things and has never had one about the water. Rudy dances past me while I am doing it. The cows drink it and go about their day. Bucky, who has eaten a coat, a hymnbook and most of a barn made of matchsticks, has never shown the slightest interest in where the water comes from.
And here is the thing I have been chewing on lately. If I stopped, everybody on this farm would know within a day, and not one of them could tell you my name in connection with it. The water is simply a fact of the place, like the weather, and I am the reason it is a fact, and those two things live very comfortably apart from each other in everybody's mind but mine.
I am not complaining. I am setting something up.
God is described as the One who sees
There is a moment in Genesis involving a woman with no standing at all, alone in a desert, who has just run away from a household where she was property.
An angel finds her by a spring, and she does something remarkable. She gives God a name:
And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me? (Genesis 16:13)
Thou God seest me. That is Hagar, and she is the first person in Scripture recorded as naming God, and the name she reaches for is not almighty or holy. It is the God who sees.
She was the least visible person in that entire story. And the thing she needed to say about God, having met Him, was that being unseen had turned out not to be true.
You are watched at the exact moment nobody is watching, and you have an audience already. That is not consolation for a small life. Genesis 16:13 is a description of what God is like, and it is His Spirit who keeps a hidden job from turning bitter.
You have not been doing any of it out of sight of Him. The written word has the least visible person in a story reaching for the God who sees as the first name anybody gave Him, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that arrive in a barn rather than stay in a desert.
The reward that is deliberately hidden
Jesus talks about unseen work more directly than most people remember, and He is not describing sacrifice. He is describing a strategy.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6:3, 4)
He says the same thing about prayer and about fasting in the same passage, three times over, with the same phrase each time: thy Father which seeth in secret.
And the contrast He draws is not between people who do good and people who do not. It is between people whose reward arrives as visibility and people whose reward comes from God. Of the first group He says a sobering thing: they have their reward. They got the thing they were working for. It was just very small.
You are working for a reward that is described as kept rather than as delayed. Matthew 6:4 says the Father who sees in secret shall reward openly, and the Spirit of God is what makes that a fact about an arrangement rather than a promise about a feeling.
You have not been left with the smaller of the two rewards. Matthew 6:2 says of the visible ones that they already have theirs, and His Spirit is what makes that comparison land as relief in a person who has never had a mention.
Faithfulness is the same substance in either size
There is a principle Jesus states plainly and it runs the opposite direction to how people plan a life.
He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. (Luke 16:10)
Not that the small thing leads to the big thing as a reward. That faithfulness in the least is faithfulness in much, already, of the same substance. The character does not change when the audience arrives. It only becomes visible.
You are already the thing you were hoping to become in front of people. Luke 16:10 makes the least and the much the same substance rather than two stages, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that read as being recognized instead of as being encouraged.
So here is what I have arrived at, carrying water in the dark in February.
You are seen in the part nobody sees. Not eventually, not summarized later, not tallied up at the end by somebody consulting a record. Genesis 16:13 names Him the God who sees, present tense, and it is the Holy Spirit rather than any evidence in the yard who makes that steady at half past five.
That does not make the work interesting. The work remains twenty minutes and a trough. You have not changed the job. You have changed who the job is done in front of, and Matthew 6:4 puts the Father in the room while it is happening, and His Spirit is what turns a duty into an offering.
And this is the part for whoever is reading it out loud, because they need it more than the child does. Nobody thanks you for most of what you do, and you have been doing it anyway, and you have probably decided somewhere along the way that this is simply what adults are for. You are not unseen, and you have never once been unseen. Matthew 6:4 says the reward for exactly this comes from the Father rather than from the room, and the Spirit who was with Hagar in an empty desert is the same one in a kitchen at half past five.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over what nobody notices is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God is named in Scripture as the One who sees, so speak to the sense that this counts for nothing: you have standing to address it because He was there while you did it. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Genesis 16:13 and Matthew 6:4 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Unglamorous job nobody notices, you are not nothing. The Word of God says thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly, and He was in the room the whole time it was happening.
- Feeling that this needs saying out loud, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am seen and I am known, because Genesis 16:13 has the first name anybody gave God being Thou God seest me, said by a woman alone in a desert.
- Father, You are the God who sees, and You have been the audience for all of it. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word says You were never bored and never once looked away.
Genesis 16:13
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