You are the God who sees me
In the fourth chapter of Lost Women of the Bible, Hagar is a woman who is misunderstood. Carolyn Custis James explains that she was a slave girl, a maidservant and as human property didn’t even have rights over her own body, she was invisible. Sarah, distraught that she has no child to offer Abraham, gives her slave girl to Abraham (Gen 16:3-4) and she conceived. Of course this was culturally acceptable for a barren wife to do, but in God’s eyes it wasn’t ok. (at least that was what I understood).
The author says this:
Hagar was disenfranchised on all three counts, for she was a Gentile, a slave, and a woman. She came to this moment as Sarah’s abused and rejected slave girl. But to the Angel of the Lord she was God’s image bearer with great value, dignity and purpose.”
The Angel of the Lord finds her in the wilderness, where she had run to. “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from , and where are you going?” (Gen. 16:8)
This dejected woman heard from God that she and her unborn child were included in God’s promises to Abraham. She was not peripheral to God’s plan for Abraham or for Sarah–a strong hint that God intended all along to encompass Gentiles among his people. God had a plan for Hagar too. She learned she was carrying a son and that both she and her child would survive their tragedy. She was to return to her master and tell him God had named their son Ishmael.”
“Her next two actions reveal what real theology is all about. First, she does the unthinkable. She gives God a name. No one else in Scripture-male or female-ever names God. Hagar does. She names him El Roi: “The God who sees me.” The new name she gives to God expresses her most basic theological conviction: She is not invisible to God.
Second, Hagar lived her theology–took it with her into the hardest place of all. Knowing God’s eye was upon her emboldened her to do the impossible. She returned to Sarah, the woman she most feared and who had grievously wronged her. After years of slavery, Hagar’s return to Sarah was possibly the first truly free act of her life. Sarah thought she needed Hagar to secure a baby for her husband. Now Hagar has something Sarah needs a whole lot more than a child–the message that God’s eyes are on Sarah too.”
“In sending her back to Abraham and Sarah, God was blessing Hagar again. God doesn’t call us to himself without also calling us to his people. It is a mixed blessing for all of us, for the church isn’t always the safest place. The people there aren’t necessarily the ones we would choose for our friends, and sadly, some of our most painful wounds come from our relationships with other believers. But these are the people we need and who also need us. We come to know God better and grow stronger as Christians when we are joined to the community of his people and we work together to know him.”
Excerpts taken from the fourth chapter of Lost Women of the Bible by Carolyn Custis James.
