Genesis 16 & Genesis 21
My name is Hagar. I was Sarai’s plan B, chosen to carry a child my mistress would raise as her own. But that plan capsized when I conceived. I became The Problem. I couldn’t even look at Sarai without being accused of contempt.
I dared to hope Abram would protect me from her jealous anger or at least speak up on my behalf. After all, I was carrying his child. But no. He chose the coward’s way out, basically handing over the reins to his wife Sarai.
In the end, I had no other option but to flee into the desert. Stupid move, you say? Well, at the time I wasn’t thinking quite straight. All I wanted was to be free from her incessant nagging, belittling words, and harsh treatment.
The strange thing is, that’s where God found me. In the midst of the dry desert, with nothing to my name but the clothes on my back, I met The God Who Sees. He knew everything that had happened to me. He saw my tears, heard my cries, and sought me out in my time of need.
I’d like to say all was well after that. Truth is, matters only got worse. I returned to my master and submitted to her as the angel of the LORD commanded. I gave birth to a beautiful boy, Ishmael. He was my pride and joy and made my life a little happier.
Until Sarah, as she now calls herself, saw him laughing. As was her wont, she took it the wrong way and complained about it to Abraham. Once again, I found myself wandering the desert, this time sent away by the boy’s father.
The water he’d packed for us didn’t last long in the desert heat. Before long, our lips were parched, our throats dry. We couldn’t even walk a straight line. I was certain this was the end; not a drop of water in sight, nothing but sand, rocks, and a few scraggly bushes. I set my precious boy under one of those bushes, then walked a distance away from him so I wouldn’t have to listen to his cries or watch him die. Falling to my knees in the hard dirt, I wept. Loud, gut-wrenching sobs that wracked my body.
That’s when I heard Him.
“What, Hagar?”
To say His question took me by surprise is putting it mildly. In the thick of my sorrow, I understood it as asking the obvious: “What’s wrong, Hagar?” Yet now I look back on it, I realize He was really asking me, “What is the matter with you, Hagar? Don’t you remember the promise I gave you the last time you were in the desert? The promise I made that I would multiply your offspring to such an extent that they will be too numerous to count?”
How quickly I’d forgotten that promise! In the midst of my sorrow, I saw nothing but desert and death. I forgot God’s pledge to me and to Ishmael. Had I remembered it, I might have clung to hope. Had I recalled God’s faithfulness when I wandered into the desert that first time, perhaps my outlook and my response would have been entirely different.
God went on to promise a bright future for my son. He told me he would make Ishmael into a great nation. The wilderness that had almost consumed me just moments ago would become our home. The desert that was so dry would train him to become a skilled bowman.
And then the impossible happened. I saw a well. A well where it hadn’t been before. A well in the wilderness. A well that promised God would provide our every need.
A well that promised God would never, ever, forget or forsake me.