Hagar

By Guest Writer

I try to avoid being someone that gives a quick, simple answer to a hard, nuanced situation. It’s led me to an accidental catchphrase that I often find myself saying instead: “You don’t have to put a bow on it for me.”

It’s the same reason I have been writing this for, let’s just say, far too long. I didn’t want to break my own rule, quickly wrapping up Hagar’s story with a neat and tidy bow embroidered with the words “but God saw her.” It just didn’t feel like enough to hold it all together. Is being seen by God actually enough to make up for all of the other parts of her story? Hagar’s life doesn’t look at all like what I would think someone who has been seen by God would.

Would someone who’s been seen by God conceive and carry a son they would have no legal right to? Would someone who’s been seen by God be deliberately mistreated and sinned against? Would someone who’s been seen by God be sent back to their place of slavery? In Hagar’s story, the answers are a resounding “yes.”

It was alone in the wilderness, amid these very circumstances, that Hagar had an encounter with God. And where I expected to find a list of despairing requests and justifiably bitter complaints, I instead found her caught up in something else entirely: God had seen Hagar, and she had seen Him. Calling Hagar “the woman seen by God” is not something we project onto her story; it’s a truth she named herself when she gave God a new name (El-Roi), identifying Him as the God who sees.

But it wasn’t just that Hagar was told this by Abraham or one of the other Israelites. An angel of the Lord came to her directly in the wilderness, leaving her with just one question: “In this place, have I actually seen the one who sees me?” (Genesis 16:13). Hagar had seen God.

While I can’t speak for Hagar, her words echo my own experience. When the Lord has shown up in my life in an undeniable way, it hasn’t been the answer to a prayer or the clear act of grace that has brought me the most comfort—it’s been knowing that God even heard the prayer in the first place. It means He heard me. He saw me. He remembered me. Those hard-to-describe moments have filled me with more awe, wonder, and meek astonishment than anything else I’ve ever experienced.

Being seen by God wasn’t intended to be the bow that adorned Hagar’s story with a happy ending or beautifully tied up all of the loose ends. Her story was full of tragedy, and it remained that way after both of her recorded encounters with God. Like Hagar, being seen by God hasn’t always resulted in the circumstances of my life being held together the way I want them to be. But it has resulted in me being held together. And I’ve learned, slowly but surely, that’s far better every single time.

Written by Hannah Little