Life in the Wilderness
Time moves on. Isaac has arrived. Ishmael, his older half-brother is playing. Sarah has never come to terms with her jealousy. Not satisfied that she has got what she wanted, having once tried to remove her own competition she now has to remove Isaac’s. Last time Hagar ran away. This time Hagar is banished with no hope of return.
To get the feel of living in the wilderness think of someone whose life was turned completely upside down as a result of something for which they were only partly responsible and who, once they had made a recovery and were getting back to normal, suddenly found themselves taken over by forces beyond their control and plunged into a second wilderness even worse than the first. Mary Bell* is an extreme example but there are many others, some closer in time and place.
Or think of whole nations and races (eg North Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Israel or Cuba, etc) banished from international relationships, some temporarily, some permanently, and often simply because from time to time what they do displeases others who hold power.
Hagar has many children: victims of apartheid in South Africa, the North American Indians and the Aborigines in Australia, mostly now grown up but still suffering as only slowly we become more aware of their plight and feel the need to say sorry. Or think of many groups in our own society. The story of Hagar and her children is a story of power, the price of power and who pays it.
How then do we find God? Perhaps when we discover that ‘the God who sees’ is also ‘the God who hears’. He hears the weeping, but if the child is to be saved Hagar must play her part. She is not to abandon Ishmael but to come near, lift him up and hold him tight. She does. God opens her eyes and she sees the water in the well. It was there all the time, but she only saw it when she held him tight. So, (says Trevor Dennis) ‘the God who sees’ and ‘the God who hears’ becomes ‘the God who saves.
*Gitta Sereny, Cries Unheard, 1999.
