Dear Hagar,
You were given no value, you were called a slave girl,
Still you listened to Sarah, asking nothing in return; No gems, No pearl,
And when you conceived, you thought things wouldn’t be the same,
But little did you know that the struggle would increase because of that dame.
She called you names and mistreated you,
You couldn’t say anything, You wondered what to do,
And then you decided to run away,
‘Cos it became hard for you to stay,
In a place where there was torture everyday,
And you had to bear it alone, you had no say.
As you sat near the spring in the desert with a burdened heart,
God found you there, He knew your story even the darkest part,
But something you did not know His plan,
The one which He carefully drew for you, the one from which you ran.
Thank you Hagar for teaching me that God sees,
My past, my present, my future; every tear when I am on my knees,
In the barren and lonely place; even in my self-imposed exile,
He reaches out to me and considers me worthwhile.
Love,
The Lonely Woman
Her pants echoed in the lone desert air. She kept running from what she thought was her hell. She was hurt, pregnant and alone; she wanted love, attention and hope. Voices inside her head kept reminding her of the torture she had been through. There was panic inside of her that the desert air could not brush away.
She paused and looked around, hoping to find some water to drink. She saw a spring at a distance and pushed herself to run towards it. She collapsed by the spring, and cried out to the heavens. Her pain turned into the strength of her voice. And Lo, the angel of the Lord found her beside the spring ner the road to Shur. “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” There was a paradoxical calm in the storming yet firm voice which cut right through the enigmatic desert air.
She was perplexed but she answered, “I’m running away from my mistress!” A simple and clear answer with no element that reflected any sort of hurt. The angel asked her to go back and gave her one of the greatest assurance that any woman would want to hear. “I will increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count” A slave girl received of the greatest promises from God at the desert place. She banished herself from the land where her master dwelt and she must have reached a point where she thought that she would just let the desert wind bury her into the sand. Little did she know that the Lord would find her even if she hid in the depth of the ocean.
The biggest realization one could have is that ‘God sees us’. This is reassuring as well as intimidating sometimes. It is so amazing how the Egyptian maid Hagar looked up to the heavens at her lowest and said “You are the God who sees me” (Genesis16:13). This cry or declaration must have been a first time for her. What made her think that the great God of Abraham would notice her? The gods who she had known in Egypt did not care about the destitute. Yet she cried out to Abraham’s Abba beside a spring in the desert. That spring in the desert was her promise land. It is there she realized that there is a superior power who sees her and calls her by name.
How awesome it is to think that the living God sees us- every second, every moment of our life. Even when we feel rejected, turned away or cast aside, our Lord sees and He calls us in a barren land and lonely place when we come to the end of ourselves. ‘Beer Lahai Roi’- You are the God who sees me, is what Hagar named the spring in the desert and it is written in one of the greatest book in the world, The Bible. Who thought she would go down in history! God saw her, He sees you! Even when you are running away into your self-imposed exile, He sees you. Your ‘Beer Lahai Roi’ is in your dry land. Run a little further! You are almost there.