On Hagar...& the God who sees me

 

The Wilderness of Shur is a significant geographical and historical location mentioned in the Bible, primarily in the context of the Israelites' exodus from Egypt. It is a desert region situated to the northeast of Egypt, forming part of the larger wilderness area that the Israelites traversed during their journey to the Promised Land.
(source)

I am drawn to strong women throughout history. There is something deeply compelling about those labelled “the weaker sex” who rise above station, status, class, whatever the constraint, and take up the hard work, the strong position, and weather it all, often with very little support. When we look at these women, I often wonder: who is recorded as standing beside them? Who were their allies?

Lately, circumstance has had me thinking about Hagar. Let me say upfront that, like Hagar, I am not innocent in my own story, but still, in many ways, a byproduct of circumstance.

So, about Hagar. Very little is known about her origins. What we do know, from various sources, is that she was Egyptian and brought back as a maidservant for Sarai. In the Torah, rather than being named “Hagar the Egyptian,” she is referred to as “Hagar the stranger.” Stripped of identity, Hagar exists in the household of Abraham and Sarai as a servant. Of all the maidservants Sarai may have had, I often wonder what led her to choose Hagar to give to her husband. Nothing happens by chance; rather, decisions are woven from prejudice, experience, fear, and perception.

Nevertheless, Hagar was given to Abraham to conceive a child. Scripture records that her elevation to bearer of an heir made her proud, which in turn provoked Sarai. Mistreated and overwhelmed, Hagar fled into the desert. There, God met her. And though He sent her back, He sent her back with something powerful: the knowledge that she had been seen. Her cries had not fallen on deaf ears. And, this is where I am. No matter how hard, no matter how much I want to throw in the towel, in response and obedience to God, I return to my post.

Yet, God sent Hagar back to Sarai, only for Abraham to later send her away, along with her son, at Sarah’s request - Sarah who now was living in the fulfillment of God's promise! What is the lesson here? Perhaps this: life is fickle. People are fickle. But God remains the same.

What I am learning from this: God meets me in my desperation, and even though the grief is real and the circumstances often unchanged, I am commanded to go back and complete what I started. Even then, with no guarantees and a greater likelihood of further pain and human abandonment, I return time and time again, armed with the strength of El-Roi, the God who sees me.

He stoops to conquer

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The following is taken from 'The Problem of Pain' by CS Lewis:

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We "have all we want" is a terrible saying when "all" does not include God. We find God an interruption. As St. Augustine says somewhere "God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full – there's nowhere for Him to put it." Or as a friend of mine said "we regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it's there for emergencies but he hopes he'll never have to use it."

Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call "our own life" remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make "our own life" less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness? It is just here, where God's providence seems at first to be most cruel, that the Divine humility, the stooping down of the Highest, most deserves praise. 

We are perplexed to see misfortune falling upon decent, inoffensive, worthy people - on capable, hard- working mothers of families or diligent, thrifty, little trades-people, on those who have worked so hard, and so honestly, for their modest stock of happiness and now seem to be entering on the enjoyment of it with the fullest right. How can I say with sufficient tenderness what here needs to be said? It does not matter that I know I must become, in the eyes of every hostile reader, as it were personally responsible for all the sufferings I try to explain – just as, to this day, everyone talks as if St. Augustine wanted unbaptised infants to go to Hell. But it matters enormously if I alienate anyone from the truth. Let me implore the reader to try to believe, if only for the moment, that God, who made these deserving people, may really be right when He thinks that their modest prosperity and the happiness of their children are not enough to make them blessed: that all this must fall from them in the end, and that if they have not learned to know Him they will be wretched. And therefore He troubles them, warning them in advance of an insufficiency that one day they will have to discover. The life to themselves and their families stands between them and the recognition of their need; He makes that life less sweet to them. I call this a Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is no longer worth keeping. 

If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is "nothing better" now to be had. The same humility is shown by all those Divine appeals to our fears which trouble highminded readers of scripture. It is hardly complimentary to God that we should choose Him as an alternative to Hell: yet even this He accepts. The creature's illusion of self sufficiency must, for the creature's sake, be shattered; and by trouble or fear of trouble on earth, by crude fear of the eternal flames, God shatters it "unmindful of His glory's diminution". 

Those who would like the God of scripture to be more purely ethical, do not know what they ask. If God were a Kantian, who would not have us till we came to Him from the purest and best motives, who could be saved? And this illusion of self sufficiency may be at its strongest in some very honest, kindly, and temperate people, and on such people, therefore, misfortune must fall. The dangers of apparent self sufficiency explain why Our Lord regards the vices of the feckless and dissipated so much more leniently than the vices that lead to worldly success. Prostitutes are in no danger of finding their present life so satisfactory that they cannot turn to God: the proud, the avaricious, the self righteous, are in that danger.

Head of the year

L'Shanah Tovah Tikatevu

This morning something wonderful happened. While it may not have been the sound of the shofar I heard, it was definitely a calling. I felt the gentle wooing of my heart and enjoyed the most intimate time with God that I can ever remember. The really bizarre twist to my whole experience is that I realised it was Rosh Hashanah, and while I'm not an observant Jew (in fact I consider myself a Christian, but my roots are Jewish and I am blessed to enjoy such a rich heritage that overlaps so much with my own faith) so much of what was dealt with in my heart this morning was all themed towards the message of Rosh Hashanah.

From what I understand (and it is limited!) at the heart of Rosh Hashanah is our relationship with God – our maker, our sustainer and our redeemer. And central to that is our acknowledgement of God as King of the whole universe, our brokenness and failure and need for repentance and lastly new birth, second chances, the promise of sweet new beginnings...a new year.

Today I feel like a newborn – fresh and alive. Blemish free. Ready to start a new year, a new life. And, I am so grateful for a new beginning.   

Psalm 65 & Psalm 103