Hagar in the Wilderness

Abraham had sent them away.

Hagar and the boy, with bread and a bottle of water.

They wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba.

The water in the bottle was spent.

She cast the child under one of the shrubs.

And she went and sat down over against him a good way off.

She said she could not watch the child die.

She sat over against him, and lifted up her voice, and wept.

The text is careful here. It says God heard the voice of the lad.

Not the mother's weeping. The child's voice.

And the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven.

He called her by name.

He said: What ails you, Hagar?

He said: Fear not. For God has heard the voice of the lad where he is.

Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast with your hand.

For I will make him a great nation.

And God opened her eyes.

And she saw a well of water.

She saw it.

It had been there. The well had been there the whole time.

She hadn't seen it.

She filled the bottle with water and gave the lad a drink.

God was with the boy.

He grew and dwelt in the wilderness.

He became an archer.

She had left Egypt as a slave. She had been used and discarded. She was alone in a desert with a dying child.

And the God who sees — the name she had given Him years before — saw her again.

And opened her eyes to what had always been there.

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