For Hagar, the circumstances were desperate. She was young, alone, pregnant and penniless; a slave fleeing the harsh treatment of her mistress Sarai. Seventy miles lay behind. If her destination was home in Egypt, many more difficult, dangerous miles lay ahead.
Eventually, Hagar came to a well in the Wilderness of Shur, a desolate region of rolling dunes and distant ridges, scraggly shrubs, and parched soil. There she sat, resting, remembering, weeping, surrounded by landscape as barren as her hope.
Most of us have been to that wilderness; not physically perhaps, but mentally, emotionally, spiritually, even maritally. That place of running from problems. That place of exhaustion, collapse, and white-flag surrender; of broken hopes, broken dreams, broken homes, and broken promises.
Need we ask what Hagar was thinking or feeling in that wilderness? No. All of us have entertained similar thoughts when feeling alone, mistreated, unloved, and unwanted. “Who sees me? Who knows me? Who understands me? Who cares about me?” Yet, on that day, in that desolate wilderness, Hagar learned the answers: God sees, God knows, God understands, God cares.
According to Genesis 16:7-8 (EHV), “The Angel of the Lord found Hagar beside a flowing spring in the wilderness, beside the spring on the way to Shur. He said, ‘Hagar, servant girl of Sarai, where did you come from? Where are you going?'”
Hagar was a runaway slave, languishing in the middle of nowhere, traveling by foot toward Egypt, friendless, helpless, hopeless—regretting the past, escaping the present, and fearing the future. Could circumstances be any worse? Yet, into this very setting God came to help Hagar.
And that this “Angel of the Lord” was in fact God is evident from the context; specifically, Genesis 16:13, where the Angel is referred to as both “Lord” and “God.” In other words, that Angel Who appeared to Hagar in the wilderness was the preincarnate Son of God Who, centuries later, as God-In-The-Flesh, crossed miles of Samaria to save another hurting woman at another well (John 4:5-30).
God’s dealings with Hagar were vastly different from anything she’d known as a slave. To many, Hagar was mere property. To God, she was a hurting person. Sarai made Hagar’s life difficult. God empowered Hagar to endure a difficult life. Abram and Sarai sent Hagar away into the wilderness. God sought Hagar in the wilderness and brought her back. In the Biblical narrative, Abram and Sarai refer to Hagar only as a servant girl. God called her by name and by circumstances: “Hagar, servant girl of Sarai.”
Truly, here was the God Who saw, knew, understood, and cared. Realizing this, Hagar gave God a name befitting His constant vigilance and personal attentiveness. “She called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are a God who sees.'” (verse 13 EHV) In fact, that well in the wilderness came to be called Be’er Lahai Roi, Hebrew for “Well of the One Who Lives and Sees Me.”
Hagar is referenced in only four chapters of Scripture: Genesis 16, 18, 21, and Galatians 4. Yet the story of Hagar is a story with which we can all identify. We may not be slaves, yet feel enslaved by addictions, temptations, and loveless relationships. We may not be in the Wilderness of Shur, yet find ourselves in personal circumstances equally desperate and desolate—asking all the same dismal questions: Who sees? Who knows? Who understands? Who cares?
God does. The God Who sought, found, and rescued Hagar in the wilderness is the same God Who sought, found, and saved you. His name is El Roi: “The God Who Sees Me.”
All of us have entertained similar thoughts when feeling alone, mistreated, unloved, and unwanted. “Who sees me? Who knows me? Who understands me? Who cares about me?”
is a professor at Immanuel Lutheran College in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.
