When Moms Feel UnseenSample

Step 1: God meets us where we are.

When our story begins, the family that has enslaved Hagar sees her as property, good for serving her mistress and bearing her owners a child. This dysfunctional family of God lives in a cycle of pain and abuse. Hagar, pregnant with Abram’s child, despises Sarai. Sarai blames Abram for the consequences of her plan. Abram disengages and enables unjust treatment, saying, “Your slave is in your hands. Do with her whatever you think best.” Sarai mistreats Hagar so badly that Hagar takes off alone into the desert, heading back to Egypt despite the odds that she likely won’t survive the journey.

Hagar is alone, vulnerable, and unseen.

But then God goes looking for Hagar until he finds her at a well. (In Scripture, “the angel of the Lord” refers to God, so we refer to them interchangeably in this study.) God meets her where she is—alone, despised, and desperate.

The angel speaks to Hagar, calling her by name. Until this moment in the story, no one else has called her by her name, Hagar, which means flight or forsaken. The angel then calls Hagar, by circumstance, a slave of Sarai. By recognizing her circumstance, God lets Hagar know that her desperate situation matters to God. The first step in the remarkable relationship between God and Hagar is that the angel comes to her amid a crisis that he names but does not let define her.

Scripture gives us story after story of our good God pursuing people, whatever their names and circumstances. In fact, any spiritual impulse we have toward God happens because God takes the first step toward us. In Luke 15, Jesus describes himself as the shepherd who goes after lost sheep, the woman who relentlessly searches for her lost coin, the prodigal father who runs to welcome one lost son and then pleads for his other lost son to come into the party. Without insisting we reciprocate, God comes to us, always and everywhere. We don’t have to earn God’s presence; God goes looking and finds us wherever we are on our journey.

As with Hagar, God knows your name and your story. God knows where you’ve come from and where you’re headed. God meets you wherever you are.

Prayer:

God, thank you that you see me, that you know my name and my story, that you know where I come from and where I’m going. Please, God, help me notice all the ways you meet me exactly where I am. Amen.