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Good morning, let us pray God, creator of all things. All life. May I decrease while you increase in jesus name? Amen. In 1888 dutch painter Vincent. Van Gogh left for Provence France

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to settle in a rez where he found a rental property called the Yellow House. That summer he produced what would become his most iconic works, a series of four, some flowers still lifes with bouquets of

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36, 14 and 15 flowers in simple earthenware pots . Van Gogh said his sunflowers represented art which grows in richness. The more you look at it. Among the most widely recognized artworks in the world is

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Van Gogh's 15 sunflowers, which today hangs in the National Gallery in London. Compositionally, this last work is pure simplicity, With just four elements a rustic terracotta pot, a bouquet of sunflowers, a table

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and a background wall, most notably however, is that its current famed status was not original to Van Gogh's purpose for this painting, essentially. He created it to hang in the guest room of the Yellow

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house as a welcoming decoration for his french artist friend paul Gogan rather than give his guest. Uh rather than have his guests occupy a room with dull white washed walls, he used this painting of sunflowers to

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bring a burst of yellow into the room as reflected in its name. The color of some flowers, which in latin is as the greek helios meaning sun reminded Van Gogh of the beautiful summer sunshine in the

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french countryside in this sense he saw sunflower yellow as an emblem of happiness. Ironically though this sunny decoration , evoking a sense of welcome and happiness was far from what Van Gogh was feeling inside himself. Within

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a few months after his friend arrived, Van Gogh's declining mental state erupted into random acts of violence against his friend Gogan. As he later admitted horrible fits of anxiety alternated with feelings of emptiness and fatigue.

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Before Christmas Day in 1888, the intensity of an goes mental breakdown proved the frailty of his sunflower welcome for in a mad terror. He violently chased his artist friend away. Then he cut off his ear

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for most of the rest of his short life. He was institutionalized in a mental asylum In 1890, at the age of 37 and having sold only one painting in his life, Van Gogh took his life

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feeling unseen as a full person can be. Life suffocating in our current world of social media. To feel seen often requires projecting a life that is always full of happy, bright, sunny skies and bouquets

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of flowers. Indeed, our feel good social drive has trained many to render unseen the family member or friend living with mental or substance use issues or asylum seeking Children drowning in the rio grande river or transgender

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teens contemplating suicide. Are victims of domestic violence or the millions of people released from prison or elderly people in nursing homes. Are people experiencing homelessness or people with disabilities to name a few In Genesis 16 Hagar

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was someone who was made to feel unseen as a female slave, acquired daring Abrams migration to Egypt. Her personhood was only legible as property of Sarai as a patriarchal household. It was the duty of Sarai

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to produce a male offspring. For Abram, for this afforded her status and even protection. At the outset of the story, the narrator begins with a family crisis in which Sarai is unable to fulfill her

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wifely duty with her status in peril, Soraya resorts to sexual sexual exploitation of Hagar, which in the ancient world would have been the legitimate use of female slave property. Hager's choice in the matter was a

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legal entitlement beyond the scope of her enslaved condition, she was entirely subject to the will of her own . Er Sorry Hagar could offer no resistance nor express any autonomy over herself. Cigars owner had full mastery

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over her reproductive body only Sor I could give Hagar to Abram, whereas for Hagar, her only role was to be wilderness and always willing in the building up of her mistress at whatever cost, feeling seen

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as something lesser than our full selves, is to be unseen in the U. S. A dominant way of seeing people is through a racial izing lens . This way of making sense of the world establishes

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a hierarchy of human worth. With white bodies at the apex of beauty, citizenship and power, and brown and black bodies at the social bottom in feeling unseen as full humans, racialized brown and black people

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are often relegated to unseen places like for profit. Immigration detention centers and mass prisons. Political philosopher Michael E Sawyer refers to these places as abstract zones of exception and for political historian, a chili's, maybe

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maybe they are simply non places as literally the unseen . These racialized and incarcerated bodies serve to build up the state and the status of those deemed its ideal members, feeling unfeeling, seen only as a criminal

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in our society is to be made unseen as a full human being. Despite the constraints that Hagar enslavement placed on her personhood, her desire to be seen as something more had not waned. In verse four

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, Hager's vision of herself extended beyond cerise vision of her exploitable slave property. From Egypt with almost no options for exercising her will. Hagar uses her subjection to sexual exploitation as the only viable pathway to equality

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with her mistress. In the words of a woman is biblical scholar, bonita Williams quote, Hagar, transformed before her mistress's eyes. Her attitude about herself changed as well. The child growing inside of her

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was proof that she was more than a slave. She was a woman, but before Hagar can exert any influence over the households. Head patriarch Sarah, I devised a way to return Hagar back to being

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unseen. Slave property for the good in cerise eyes was that Hagar be rendered unseen as a woman and wife to Abram reduced to just an Egyptian slave Hagar was no longer fully human, which in turn made

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her the object of oppressive violence, verse six, The Hebrew, but Sarai feeling unseen as a full person is not only a lonely place, but reflects a low evaluative status that legitimate it's annihilating forms of

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violence by those in power. For Western nation states , the dominant majority easily perpetuate their power by ensuring certain people remain unseen. And when the unseen transgender youth, battered, single mother, black and brown

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prisoner or noncitizen other, choose to defy this oppressive system and exercise some sense of their human agency, this power structure tightens its grip by removing from our intellectual gaze, textbooks on slavery, civil rights activism

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, women's white rights and the genocide of indigenous peoples . Rather than succumb to the erasing violence of Sarai , Hagar lived up to her name er and migrated back to Egypt alone and pregnant in the desert.

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She encountered a divine travel guide who saw her through a different social lens. The travel guide conveyed how the God of Israel saw her not as a sex slave, but as someone worthy of healing care here

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. The care of God began with hearing Hagar is suffering and affliction and in hearing her story of suffering . God countered the unseen curse of Sarai with a divine blessing. Hence elevating her sense of self worth

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. For Hagar, this divine form of care, translated into a way of seeing that rendered her fully seen for verse 13, I prefer the King James translation, I may be a surprise to some of

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you of the hebrew quote, thou God seest me for she said, I have I she said, have I also here looked after him that see if me in the desert. Hager learned a divine system

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of care in which her suffering was heard and hence her personhood was fully seen. Perhaps it was because of this divine empowerment of a new way of seeing people. That she needed to return to sarai and

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teach her how to see people in God. Not as a vengeful god that dries up wounds, but as a God who is attentive to suffering in this way she can be considered the bible's first theological educator

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to see. The way God sees is starkly different from how our current society trains us to see each other and the earth, for it requires hearing the suffering of those made to feel unseen instead of cursing

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them with other in violence. We are led to offer the people feeling unseen as human beings, worthy of the blessing of longevity, fruitfulness and refuge. This way of seeing was so important to Hagar that

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she even made it the name of the very place where she learned it again. I turned to Bang goes 15 sunflowers. Even after 134 years of its existence, it still reminds us of what we do

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not see in his time. It was his tormenting mental state that the sunshine, yellow flowers hid from view. Yet for the environmental activist group, just stop oil, the now£72.. pound painting renders

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seen an elite art economy that only the privilege can fully enjoy while keeping unseen. The millions of people who are dying in torrential monsoons, wildfires, severe drought and I would add mass migration unless we see

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the way God sees our unseeing of suffering people will by default, extend to unseeing the suffering of our planet. And if this optic remains in place soon , none of us will be seen, and the

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earth will be called the place where no one has