he sees You!

Hagar was an Egyptian slave-girl, charged with the responsibility of serving the wife of the wealthy and influential Abraam. She had probably heard tell of how her master was instructed by his God to leave his home and everything that was familiar, and head out on the road to a place he would later reveal. What a step of faith – to up and leave like that, not knowing where he was going.

Yet, Abram hadn’t always been honourable. When he arrived in her native Egypt, he had said the beautiful Sarai was his sister, and she had been taken into Pharaoh’s palace, only for the truth to come out when Pharaoh’s household began being afflicted with serious diseases. Abram and his entourage were sent away, but they left with more wealth than they had arrived with, including servants, of which Hagar was one.

Hagar probably didn’t have any choices. She did what she was told. When Sarai snapped her fingers, she was to come running and do her mistress’s bidding. When Sarai told her to go and sleep with Abram, so her barren mistress could obtain a child, Hagar’s feelings were not taken into account. She may well have wondered if anyone saw her – if anyone cared.

However, becoming the mother of her master’s firstborn gave this slave a bit of leverage, and she used it to full affect, She began to despise her mistress, and most likely flaunted her pregnancy, knowing she carried the one thing Sarai wanted more than anything in the world. Can we blame Hagar for this? She had been violated, and badly used, but two wrongs never make a right, and all Hagar did was make her situation even worse, to the point where Sarai began mistreating her.

What was Hagar thinking at this point – about her master and mistress, and about the God they claimed to serve? We can only imagine how frightened and alone she felt, to the point where she saw no other option but to run. So, run she did – out into the wilderness, alone, scared, and pregnant. Was she hoping to die out there, or did she intend trying to get back to her home in Egypt? Maybe she didn’t even have a clear plan. People often don’t when they’re in full panic mode. They just have to get away. They can’t take anymore, and all sense and reasoning has gone out the window.

Have you ever been there? I can look back on times in my life when I felt that feeling of shear panic. My thinking was blurred, and I lost all sense of reason. I became overwhelmed by the seeming helplessness of my situation, and consumed by the idea that I had to run. It didn’t matter where. Fortunately, in most cases, the Lord gradually helps us calm down. Our breathing returns to normal, and our sensible thinking kicks back in before we make the mistake of running. But this didn’t happen with Hagar.

Alone and pregnant, she ran through the wilderness. Was she gulping through great racking sobs as she pounded the ground, stumbling and falling over tree roots, all the while feeling that hammering in her chest that kept saying: ‘You’ve got to get away! You’ve just got to get away! Nobody cares about you! It doesn’t matter if you die out here! But you can’t go back! You just have to be free!’

Abram and Sarai may not have given much thought to poor Hagar’s emotional and physical wellbeing, but the Lord did. He saw her. He felt her panic, and he probably ran alongside her until she flopped, exhausted, beside a spring of water in the middle of the desert.

Her energy was spent. The adrenaline that had pushed her on had now led to exhaustion, and she needed water. The angel of the Lord met her there, beside the spring, and began talking to her. He asked questions to which he already knew the answer. “Where have you come from, and where are you going?” She knew where she’d come from, and remembered all too well the reason for her escape, but where was she going? Did she even know? She was just running away.

How long did Hagar and the angel sit there together? Was there more to their conversation than we read of in the Bible? Those are questions to which we’ll never have answers. What we do know is that the angel calmly told her to go back and submit to her mistress, promising her that she would give birth to a son whom she would call Ishmael (the Lord hears.) For indeed, the Lord had heard and seen her misery. He understood, even if no one else did.

That seems to have been enough for Hagar, because she did go back. We don’t know how she was received, or whether Sarai treated her more kindly from that point on, although we suspect based on later events that nothing changed. Hagar was still the servant, and Sarai the demanding mistress, even though Hagar carried Abram’s heir.

Externally, nothing had altered, and yet for Hagar, everything had , because she knew God both saw and heard her. Genesis 16 verse 13 says: “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said: “I have now seen the one who sees me.”” Just knowing the Lord saw her, and was with her during her pain and misery helped spur her on, and enabled her to endure what had previously seemed unendurable.

I don’t know what you are going through today. Maybe, like Hagar, you feel you are being unjustly treated. Perhaps you feel undervalued at home or at work, or you are being wrongly blamed for something that has gone wrong. I cannot promise your circumstances will change overnight. Often, we are called to endure, but we never have to cope alone. During those times in my life when the panic has arisen, the Lord has come to me, as he did with Hagar, and reminded me that he sees, he hears, and he understands. Sometimes, he has stepped in miraculously to bring light into the darkness, but more often, he walks with me through the troubling times, revealing that the seemingly impossible is possible after all, if I just lean on him. The troubles are still there. I still have to walk through the hard places, but just knowing he’s beside me gives me the strength to walk on.

If you have a friend who’s going through a Hagar experience, why not come alongside them. As well as reminding them that God sees and hears, let them know you do also, and although you can’t change things or make them better, you can be there as a listening ear, or provide loving arms for them to fall into when they just need a good cry. We serve a God who sees and hears the injustices of this world, and he calls us to be his ambassadors in the lives of others. What an awesome privilege!