When Life Doesn’t Match Your Dreams touches on a lot of women who will be familiar to us. Many of them are either characters in novels I’ve written or hold the starring role. But there is always more we can learn about people in general, and that is just as true about people in Scripture.
Hagar is one of those women who intrigues me. She is Egyptian. Scripture shows her as a servant or possibly a slave to Sarai and ultimately to Abram. When I wrote Sarai, some of my research suggested that Hagar might have come from Egyptian royalty, which is why I showed her that way in Sarai.
But what stands out to me about Hagar’s character is the way she named God. She called Him, The God Who Sees Me. There had to be a reason she chose such a name for a God she had likely never met personally until that moment.
I wonder if that’s how Hagar felt. When they looked her way, did they look into her eyes? Did they see her? Or did they see a slave? Just another young woman meant to do what was commanded of her.
I sense by her reaction to God’s interaction with her that Hagar often went unnoticed. If not for her youth and ability to conceive a child, she might have slipped into oblivion and never found her name immortalized on the pages of Scripture. Sarai’s barrenness may have been the only reason she saw her maid, Hagar, and concocted the plan to give her as a surrogate to her husband.
Did Abram notice her when he took her to his tent? Did he see her when she announced that she was pregnant? Did anyone in the camp call her friend?
I’ve been in situations when I felt rather friendless or unwanted or unnoticed. Introverted people tend to stick to the shadows. And people don’t usually notice shadows unless they are scary. I rather doubt my shadow is scary, and Hagar’s probably wasn’t either.
I wonder if her flight to the desert on her return trip to Egypt when God met her on the road—was this the first time someone had called her by name?
Was it the first time someone spoke to her with compassion and perhaps looked into her eyes?
It seems to me that she must have looked into His to be able to notice that He saw her.
Why else give Him the name, The God Who Sees Me?
Because the God Who Sees Me is in the business of changing lives. He looks on us in love and compassion and He is calling us to Himself. He wants to give us so much more than we can ever get from any other source.
Not from ourselves. Not from our friends or family. Not from our work or our goals or anything the world has to offer us.
“No eye has seen, no ear has heard,
and no mind has imagined
what God has prepared
for those who love him.”
He sees us.
Do we see Him?
~Selah
#whenlifedoesntmatchyourdreams #hagar #behindthescenes #nonfiction #doesanybodyseeme
