Genesis 21:19 (MSG)
Why is it so hard sometimes to study God’s Word?
Have you ever heard that whisper early in the morning, just before the sun rises?
Come and meet with Me.
You feel this tug at your heart, persuading you to get up and go to that place where you meet with God. It begs you to get up, and yet sometimes you stay still.
Why?
Maybe it’s because we think we know what’s waiting for us.
Condemnation. Correction. A reminder of all the things we did wrong the day before.
I’m sorry, God.I know I’m not perfect.I tried.Sometimes even saying I’m sorry gets old.
But I’ve learned something. When I feel that way and obey the tug in my heart anyway, I rarely meet the God I was afraid was waiting for me.
Instead, I meet a God who opens my eyes, once again, to see how much He loves me.
A couple of mornings ago, I accepted that early-morning invitation, and I was amazed by what God showed me.
I was reading in Genesis about Hagar and Ishmael.
Hagar and her son were sent away from the only home they had known. Sarah did not want Ishmael, Abraham’s son through Hagar, sharing in Isaac’s inheritance. Abraham gave Hagar some food and a skin of water and sent her and Ishmael away.
With no plan, no home and no idea where she was going, a devastated Hagar wandered into the wilderness of Beersheba with her son.
Just a mother, her child, some food and one skin of water.
And then the water ran out.
As Ishmael grew weaker, Hagar believed he was going to die. They were alone in the wilderness, and as far as she could see, there was nothing she could do to save her child.
So she placed him under a bush and walked away because she couldn’t bear to watch him die.
I can only imagine that mother’s heart.
I picture her some distance away, curled into a ball, sobbing uncontrollably.
She wasn’t crying because she didn’t love him enough to keep trying.
She was crying because she had run out of everything she knew to do.
The water was gone.
She couldn’t see another source.
She couldn’t save her son.
But God could see what Hagar couldn’t.
God heard the boy crying and called to Hagar from heaven.
“What’s wrong, Hagar? Don’t be afraid.”
He told her to get up, go to her son, take him by the hand and hold on to him because God still had a future for this child.
And then comes the sentence that stopped me:
God opened her eyes.
She looked.
And there it was.
A well of water.
The water she desperately needed was there.
She simply couldn’t see it.
Hagar thought she had run out of options.
God knew she was standing near a well.
Think about that for a minute.
Hagar’s water skin was empty, but God’s provision wasn’t.
She saw a dying child. God saw a future.
She saw the end of the story. God knew there were chapters she couldn’t even imagine yet.
And here’s something else I love:
God heard Ishmael before Hagar ever saw the well.
Her inability to see God’s provision didn’t mean He wasn’t providing.
Her fear didn’t mean He had abandoned her.
Her wandering didn’t mean God had lost track of where she was.
And her empty water skin certainly didn’t mean God had run out of water.
Ha! I love that.
Hagar was wandering in the wilderness of Beersheba—a name connected with a well and with seven or an oath. She was in a place whose very name pointed toward a well, yet in her grief and desperation, she couldn’t see the water she so desperately needed.
How many times do we do the same thing?
We become so consumed by what we’ve lost, what we fear or what we cannot fix that we can’t see what God may have already placed nearby.
Sometimes the miracle isn’t God creating the well.
Sometimes the miracle is God opening our eyes to see it.
And the story doesn’t end at the well.
God gave Hagar the peace to trust her son to Him.
She could not control what would happen to Ishmael. She could not see his future.
But God could.
Scripture tells us:
“God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer.”
God was with him.
The little boy Hagar once laid beneath a bush believing he was going to die grew up in the wilderness of Paran and became an archer—a skilled warrior with a bow and arrow.
I love the imagery of the bow.
Throughout Scripture, and especially in the Psalms, we see the bow used in pictures of strength, battle and God moving in power.
God was still in action.
He was in action when Hagar couldn’t see the well.
He was in action when she thought her son was dying.
He was in action when she was crying in the wilderness.
And He was in action as that little boy grew into an archer.
God is always in action!
This story gives hope to the mother who is begging God to heal her sick child.
It gives hope to the mother watching her child wander and praying that God will bring them home.
And it gives peace to the mother who has lost a child and has had to place her precious little one completely into the hands of God.
We never know when our eyes will be opened to see the well.
For some, He will lead us to the well of healing water we have desperately prayed for.
For others, He will give us the peace to place what we love most into His hands and trust Him with what we cannot understand.
But either way, God is still in action.
We may wander, but He knows exactly where we are.
We may not see the well, but He does.
We may not understand the path, but He knows where it leads.
Our paths through this wilderness may look very different, but if we trust Him and keep following, they all lead to the same destination- our Heavenly home.
