Genesis 16
Okay, so you believe you know what God would have you do, and you plot out that course in your mind and heart. But nothing seems to happen. God doesn’t seem to be doing God’s part, so you decide that God must have meant something else. Or you think that maybe God meant you to help out in some way, that you need to do whatever God actually meant.
This is where Sarai and Abram find themselves. They get tired of waiting. They begin to doubt. They start with the “God must have meant. . . .” And then everything falls apart.
It can be so very hard to figure out how to live our lives. Even we are striving to be faithful, anxiety and doubt and impatience can lead us away from who we actually are and what we are called to do in the world. God can be so very slow. And we can be so very certain.
And, besides, sometimes God does want us to do something. Sometimes we are not supposed to simply wait. But, truthfully, waiting is never simple. It always takes effort, effort to keep listening, effort to keep trusting, effort to keep on with the every day with some measure of joy and peace. Waiting is really hard.
When Sarai gets her bright idea about editing God’s promise and taking a path that seems much more plausible, everyone is hurt. Sarai is ripped apart with jealousy. Abram is stuck and seems to withdraw from the situation. And Hagar. . . it’s unbearably awful for her. No one had considered the effect of all this on her.
She is the one to whom Yahweh now turns. Again, we read of an angel, a messenger of God, but Hagar insists that she actually saw God directly somehow, saw God and lived. God goes looking for her. God goes looking for the one who seems to be outside the promise. What God has her do seems terribly hard, but, of course, what options did Hagar really have? God assures her that God is with her, hears her, that she matters to him, and that her child will have a future. Hagar names this God who speaks to her. She calls him “God sees.” It must have been lovely to her not to have been invisible anymore, to be more than a container for someone else’s will.
Oh, God, help us to hear and to listen again and to hear some more. May we walk in your ways so that we do not cause pain to others. May we walk in your ways so that we can become the people we are created and called to be.
And, thank you. Thank you for always seeing the people we cast aside in our blindness. Help us to see, too.