What a slave woman in the wilderness can teach us about being known before we are needed.

"You are the God who sees me." (Genesis 16:13)

You might be in one of three places right now. You might be the woman whose usefulness is what is valued. You might be the woman running. You might be the woman who obeyed God and got hurt anyway.

Hagar lived all of those, and she didn't choose any of it.

She chose to run. At least that was under her control. She ran far from the contempt and mistreatment inside the household, and into the desert. Into the in-between—away from where she had been and nowhere near where she was going.

That's where God found her.

Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going? (Genesis 16:8)

She told him the truth. I am running away from my mistress.

Hagar, the Egyptian woman, had a conversation with God while she was on the run from his people. She had nothing left to protect.

He told her to go back, to return to an unjust situation, and he told her why.

Because he would work within what was broken to secure her son's future. He names the son, Ishmael, meaning God hears, and promises Ishmael’s descendants will be too many to count. He put a name on what was waiting for her inside the story she was already in.

And then she did something no one in Scripture had done yet.

She gave God a name.

You are El Roi. The God who sees me. (Genesis 16:13)

She named the God who had let all of it happen, because she felt seen. Not forgotten or passed over. Seen.

Have I really seen the One who sees me? She was a slave woman alone in the wilderness with nothing to offer. She had no standing in anyone's story but is the first person in all of Scripture to name God from her own experience of him.

Not Abraham. Not Moses, standing before the burning bush. But Hagar. In the wilderness. Seen.

Then she obeyed God and returned to Abraham and Sarai.

Hagar is the first of her kind in Scripture. She won’t be the last.

After Hagar obeyed the Lord and returned to Sarai, she left again. This time she didn’t run; she was cast out.

Sarai had birthed the son of the promise, Isaac. But the household couldn’t hold both boys. Hagar and her son had to go.

Abraham rose early and prepared bread and water for their journey. Her son, Abraham's son too, was placed on her shoulder. And the door closed behind her.

No rage this time. No running. Just the long walk into the wilderness of Beersheba and the slow running out of water.

She didn’t cry out to El Roi and may not have felt he saw her. But without water, she had no hope of survival. She placed her son under a bush and walked away—about a bowshot, the Bible says, as if someone measured exactly how far a mother would have to go to not watch her child die.

There she sat down, lifted her voice, and wept.

God heard the boy crying.

What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid. (Genesis 21:17)

He repeated his promise over the boy’s life, and then he opened her eyes. He opened her eyes. She saw a well of water. The text doesn’t say that God produced a well. It clearly says that he opened her eyes to what was already there. She had been sitting beside provision she couldn't see because grief had shut her eyes to it.

If you are in the wilderness now, used, running, or cast aside, you are not outside his sight. You never were.

He is the God who sees. It’s not what he does; it’s who he is: El Roi.

He not only knows where you’re coming from and where you’re going. He knows what he is forming in you, the moment he is preparing you for. There is more ahead than the grief is letting you see right now. But trust the One unfolding the story, even if the story is not the one you would have chosen.

The well is already there. Let him open your eyes to it. And don't look away.

Next in the series

If this resonated with you, or if you recognize yourself in one of these seasons, the 4th Gen mentoring program exists for exactly that season. A year of being known. Of learning to hear his voice over the noise. Of being formed for what is ahead.

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