Then Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” But Abram said to Sarai, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.
The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, “Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am running away from my mistress Sarai.” The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress, and submit to her.” The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.”
And the angel of the Lord said to her,
“Now you have conceived and shall bear a son;
you shall call him Ishmael,
for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.
He shall be a wild ass of a man,
with his hand against everyone,
and everyone’s hand against him;
and he shall live at odds with all his kin.”
So she named the Lord who spoke to her, “You are El-roi”; for she said, “Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?” Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
Hagar bore Abram a son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
Caught up in a system
stacked against her
with no options
and no way out
At the end of her tether
Hagar flees
It’s probably not the first time
and it certainly wasn’t the last time
that she knew despair
The despair of one
who is used and abused
a chattel
with no rights or protection
Yet, in her flight
in her desolation
by the roadside
she encountered God
and recognised
the One who promised life
Hagar saw and named
the God she encountered.
Her recognition
in the moment of despair
brought from God
words of comfort
and words of terror.
The promise of a birth
and the guarantee of struggle
And so this mother
of questionable heritage
without standing in her culture
became the bearer of a nation
An outsider
who saw and acknowledged God
And still
it is the outsiders
those on the margins
the ones we dismiss
who see the things
that we do not.
It is those we have sidelined
who have a better perspective
and can alert us
to our blindness
But first we have to look
to the edges
and there discover
the ones with whom
God hangs out.
The ones who bear strongly
the likeness of Christ
From them we might learn
to see
and to know
God among us.
No comments:
Post a Comment