Do you ever feel invisible? Maybe you have sat in church, and no one welcomes you. Maybe you were welcomed, but not asked how you are. Maybe they asked you were asked you are, but you weren’t sure that they actually cared. Or maybe your life is in a bit of a mess at the moment, and you fear that you would simply be judged if you told people about your troubles.
You may seem invisible to people,
but you are not invisible to God. God
sees you, and He cares. He pities us in
our misery, even when we have made a right mess of things. As one commentator points out, ‘his grace
does not dry up simply because we have been stupid.’
In Genesis 16 we see a servant
girl, Hagar, whose life is in a mess.
She has gone on the run, but God has come and found her. He loves her and has compassion on her.
1. The
God who doesn’t give up on us, even though we mess things up
One of the first things that
struck me when I read this passage is that everyone does things that are wrong.
God had given Abram a promise, that involved descendants, but Sarai lacks faith to wait on God and comes up with a plan that was definitely not God’s will. Abram and Sarai are not demonstrating faith, as they take matters into their own hands.
Abram,
like Adam, goes along with his wife’s foolish plan. Hagar despises Sarai. Sarai, like Eve, shifts the blame. Abraham abdicates his responsibility to care
for Hagar. Sarai mistreats her servant. This is one big mess, and everyone here has
some share in the blame!
How long will God put up with
such people? He will put up with us as
long as it takes! He has always involved
flawed and wicked people in the bringing about of his promises and the building
of his kingdom.
Maybe other people are
responsible for the misery you face.
Maybe you are responsible for it.
Most likely, it is a bit of both, but God has not taken his eyes off you, and he cares about your pain.
2. The God who finds us, even when we weren’t looking
for him
Hagar was an Egyptian. That is important. She was an outsider to Abram’s people. But God had promised Abram that through him
all the people of the world would be blessed (12:3). God will give this Egyptian woman a promise of many descendants, that reminds us of His promise to the patriarch Abram.
Hagar is not looking for
God. She is simply running away from
Sarai. Yet God sees her misery and is
moved by compassion. ‘The angel of the
LORD found her’ (7).
Who is the angel of the
LORD? Some people look at Hagar’s words
and think that the angel must be God. She
says, ‘the LORD spoke to me … I have seen the One who has seen me’ (13). Is this Jesus in come as a messenger from
heaven?
Whether the angel of the LORD as
mentioned here is Jesus or not, we can say that he is acting like Jesus. Jesus left heaven and has come to our
wilderness, to find. Jesus said that he has come,’ to seek and
save that which is lost’ (Luke 19:10).
3. The God whose grace is challenging
‘You are to give him the name Ishmael,
for the LORD has heard your misery’ (11).
Ishmael means ‘God hears’.
She responds to God’s kindness
with obvious love. She gives God a name,
‘you are the God who sees me’ (13). She
calls the place Lahai Roi, meaning, ‘the well of the living God who sees me.’
But just because God has found
her, does not mean that life is going to be a bed of roses. This son is going to be like a wild donkey, and he will fall out with his brothers (12).
Then there is the fact that God’s love comes with a challenging command,
‘go back to your mistress and submit’ (9).
Sarai had been very unkind to her, but she is going to have to forgive.
I recently read Tim Keller’s
book, ‘Forgive’. There Keller writes, ‘if
you believe the gospel – that you are saved by the sheer grace and the free
forgiveness of God – and you still hold a grudge – at the very best it shows
that you are blocking the actual effect of the gospel in your life, or you’re
kidding yourself and perhaps you don’t believe the gospel at all.’
Conclusion
You may feel invisible to people, but you are never invisible to God. God
sees you, he cares about your misery, and he has come to find you. ‘The LORD watches over your coming and your
going both now and forevermore’ (Psalm 121:8).
But sometimes it is hard to believe that he is watching. I was recently thinking back to a time when I was twenty-two, and my life was in a mess. I was dealing with crippling anxiety, and I no longer wanted to live. Where was God? Why would he have allowed me pass through that? A friend bravely admitted to me, ‘sometimes I feel bitter, I think to God, “you see my pain. So why does this happen?”’
I want us to respond to this
passage by first of all seeing. Sometimes we do see what God is doing. Sometimes the answers to our prayers are obvious,
and as we hoped for. Then we should
respond like Hagar with joyful love.
Other times we need to search. As I looked back at that time of despair,
at age twenty-two, I began to see evidences of God finding me. I don’t know why I had to go through that
time, but God did send people who listened to me and cared for me. One way to see for God seeking us is to develop
a life of thanksgiving, where we look for evidence of God’s goodness.
Finally, there are times when all we can do is trust. The story that centres around Abraham, in this part of Genesis, focuses on faith. Abram was called to hold on to the promises of God, even when it looked like God was not acting. In the darkest times we ask God to help us trust the Jesus who cried, 'my God. my God why have you forsaken me', in order that we never would be forsaken, and we trust the Jesus who promised, that he will never leave us nor forsake us (Matthew 28:20).
‘The eyes of the LORD are on those who fear Him, on those who hope in
His unfailing love’ (Psalm 33:18).
Kady was a devote Muslim named after one of Mohamad’s
wives. She relished the annual Hajj when
two million faithful people would descend on her home city of Mecca to take the
anti-clockwise walk around the Kaaba stone.
Then she started to have dreams in which Jesus appeared to her. So, she prayed one night, ‘Jesus, if you’re
who you say you are … meet me at the Kaaba stone during the hajj.’
During that hajj as she paraded with the great crowd around
the Kaaba stone she found herself among a whole group of people who had a
vision of Jesus at the same time. They
saw Jesus standing on top of the Kaaba stone with an astonishing, magnetic
smile on his face. A short while later
she gave her life to Jesus.
When she told her friend Amina about this Amina felt chills
all over. ‘I’m an accountant, and I
don’t have the emotional nature you do.
But what you just old me,’ Amina said to Kady, ‘it warmed my heart. Do you think that Jesus would ever come to me
in a dream?’
That night Jesus did come to Amina in a dream. He said, ‘Amina, I love you, I am El Roi, the
God who sees you. That is my name. That who I am. I hear your cries. I hear you, and I see you, Amina.’
The next day Amina told Kady about her dream. That evening there went to a secret church
together. One of the young men there
pulled out his phone and explained that the Holy Spirit had strongly put on his
heart a reading that they should share together. It was Genesis 16. In that passage the angel of the Lord comes
to Hagar, the angel of the Lord is Jesus, and Hagar gives God the name El Roi.
Amina leaned against Kady in the secret church meeting and
began to cry. ‘I’m overwhelmed to be
here! First, I had the dream about
Jesus, and now I am here with all these people who love one another like family. My heart has never been so full, Kady … Because I am a Muslim, I am a daughter of
Hagar. Not only did Jesus come to her;
he came to me. We both wondered if God
was seeing us. And He does see us,
Kady. We’re women, yet He sees us … and
He loves us. In the Qur’an, Allah
doesn’t even say Hagar’s name, but in the Bible, Hagar is honoured and loved
and even privileged to give God one of His names. Can you believe it? My mind just can’t comprehend all of
this. I’m so relieved! How wonderful that Jesus loves us!
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