What About the Hagars?

Oh God Who Sees and Hears,

To Hagar, you were the God Who Sees.

Misused, mistreated, and sent away by those she served and depended upon – indeed, a husband whom you loved! – she was not forgotten by the God Who Sees.

You gave her instructions that went against her instinct, “go back to where you were mistreated.” But she had seen the God who saw her, and trusted this God enough to go back, even when her pride would have rebelled. She submitted and we hear no more for fourteen years.

Now, a decade and a half later, you fulfill your promise for another son, by the woman who sent her away years earlier, jealous of her pregnancy. And Hagar is sent away again, this time with a young teenage boy, marked by your promise and seal.

Lost in the wilderness, confused, hungry, and parched for water, she despairs. Such profound loneliness drives her to give up, placing her son far enough away from herself that she does not have to hear his dying cries; her own sobs from a distance overwhelming his.

But you saw her again. And some 14 years earlier, before she gave birth, you gave Hagar a name for this boy, Ishmael, “God Hears.” And you fulfilled your promise and heard his cries.

You came to her in her abandonment by others on the one hand, and her giving up hope and isolating herself from the son she loved on the other.

The God Who Sees and Hears opened her eyes we are told, and she saw a well of water. The two are rescued again, and “God was with the boy as he grew up.” (Gen. 21:20)

Hagar becomes the grandmother of princes, because you do not abandon your promises, oh God who Sees and Hears. She is finally surrounded by a family of honor who cherishes her, never to be sent away again.

She is not the favored wife. Her child is not the favored child. She who is mistreated and abandoned and betrayed and alone will not be so forever. Because you have a plan.

You have a plan that none of us can begin to guess at, God, unless we trust your word in our moments of utter desperation and aloneness. Unless we trust you enough to follow your instructions – even if they are for us to go back to where we were mistreated, because you are doing something new there that will take us down the road another decade and a half. For you are a God of love, and relationship, and unity even in your Triune nature.

You have created us for community and togetherness, even when we feel tossed aside by those we love and rely on. Even when we hunger for community and thirst for justice. Even when we isolate ourselves further because some part of our hearts has just given up hope that such things exist for us.

Then oh, God, open our eyes to the well of living water you will provide in our wilderness. Fulfill your plan and promises in us, oh God who Sees and Hears.

Amen.