Hagar, part 5

What you see and hear is not everything.

You may think you are only experiencing a dry place, a desert-like experience where your needs outweigh the provisions you have. You may think you have lost friends, even family, or perhaps you are watching from a distance a loved one who is experiencing their own hell, and you are afraid to watch. Even though God may have helped you in the past, it may seem that today is different.

We read the final few verses that tell the story of Hagar, which have been passed down through the generations, so that even the Apostle Paul speaks of her (Galatians 4 v 21-31). Hagar is back in the desert experience.

^“14 Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the Desert of Beersheba. ¹⁵ When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. ¹⁶ Then she went off and sat down about a bowshot away, for she thought, “I cannot watch the boy die.” And as she sat there, she began to sob. ¹⁷ God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. ¹⁸ Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” ¹⁹ Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. ²⁰ God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. ²¹ While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt.” (Genesis 21 v 14-21)

Do you know when you have come to the end? The end of your tether? That rope tied to an animal will keep it in order. But there’s no rope left.

She had run out of water, and though she had experienced the desert before, this time it was different; it was worse than before, and she had a son with her.

Abraham, the man of God, the one who had great wealth and many servants, sends Hagar and his son away with meagre supplies. I still meet men and women of God who seem to be blinded by their actions. They have the ability to help, but they don’t. In fact, doing nothing or very little appears to be unkind. Blindness affects the most spiritual.

Hagar, who had named God ‘El Roi’ because He is a God who sees her, has reached the lowest point in her life. God might have seen her before, but now she cannot even face seeing her own son die before her eyes. God seems blind, deaf, and she has to blind herself because she cannot bear hearing her son cry from thirst. She begins to cry.

Then comes the turning point: “God heard the boy crying.”

Who did God hear? Not Hagar, though surely He did. Just like his mother, this next generation, her son, also had to experience El Roi, the God who sees.

God brings hope, a destiny, and a simple command to obey.

Where did the well come from? Did God create it there and then? He could have done. Or was her pain and despair so traumatic that it had blinded her to what was in front of her? In front of her, all the time, was the well. She had come to the end of her life at the very place which would save her and her son.

This place you are in right now may not be the end, but the beginning of a new chapter in your life. Dry your eyes and look up. God’s provision may be closer to you than you realise.

So Hagar’s story comes to an end, for what we know at least. Ishmael grows up in the desert, presumably with his mother, and she finds him a wife from her home nation. God keeps His promise about Ishmael, for he too births a nation.

 The lesson is this: The desert doesn’t win. It becomes a servant for the purposes of God in your life. Being cast out, losing everything, isn’t the last sentence in your story. The trauma is real, but so is your God. He sees you and hears you. He has the last word on your life, not anyone else.