Genesis 16: 1-6; 21: 8-19


A Vale of Tears

Except for Genesis 1-11, Hagar is the first person to receive a theophany and the wilderness is at the heart of her story. There are two Acts.

In Act One Sarah fails to live up to her good intentions to allow Abraham to have children by her handmaid and is consumed with envy once the child is born. Life for Hagar becomes intolerable and she runs away into the wilderness. In Act Two, following the birth of Isaac, Sarah’s jealousy grows. She calls on Abraham to get rid of them both and this time Hagar is driven into the wilderness.

Notice the difference between Act One and Act Two.. Not much had changed in the Abrahamic household and the wilderness was the same wilderness, but for Hagar it was very different. In Act 1 Hagar chose to go, albeit under pressure. In Act 2 Hagar had no choice. 

Trevor Dennis focuses the difference by moving the spotlight from the human experience to the divine response, inviting us to look at the God who Sees (Act 1) and the God who Saves (Act 2). 

In Act 1 God’s response is to tell Hagar to pull herself together, lift herself out of the wilderness, go back and try again. He has other ideas for her. She needs to think of hope, the future, and her potential. But change comes not as a result of anything Hagar does but because of what God does. He sees her — and before she sees him. Wilderness is not the place where she finds God. It is in her moment of extreme distress that God finds her. Hagar’s role is to respond, and that comes when she feels noticed.

In Act 2 it is different. Here the ‘God who Sees’ becomes the ‘God who Saves’, and this time it does depend on Hagar’s initiative. Ishmael is dying of hunger and thirst. Before long Hagar will follow him. All they need to survive is water, but this is wilderness. Yet the water is there. She just doesn’t see it. Only when she is so desperate that she picks Ishmael up and gives him a big hug, creating genuine warmth and affection in the wilderness, does she suddenly become aware of a resource which had been there all the time. She had to spot it, and she only found it when she ‘found’ someone else in the wilderness and responded to them.

© Alec Gilmore 2014