This past Sunday, my church choir ministered with a song I wrote called “You Are the One.”  Based on Hagar’s experience with God in Genesis 16 (Gen 16:1-16), the text celebrates the fact that even when she ran away from tough circumstances, God still met her in the wilderness. He instructed her to return and face the challenging situation. He then spoke to the future of the child that was in her womb.  Hagar called God by the name of El Roi: You-Are-the-God-Who-Sees.  After Ishmael, whose name means “God hears,” was born and weaned, Hagar was sent away and took him with her (see Gen 21:1-34 NKJV).  The circumstances appear all the more dire after her resources to take care of the child were used up.  The decision to let go and leave Ishmael at a distance so she wouldn’t see him perish must have been excruciating.  Can you imagine the painful irony: The child, whom God Himself named “God hears,” is placed under a shrub to die in the wilderness?    I can imagine Hagar crying out through her tears, “Does not “the-God-Who-Sees” see this?”

Perhaps you have asked those very questions amidst the circumstances in which you are walking.  Maybe it feels like God changed His mind or that He has abandoned His promise to you.  Perhaps there is even “a lad” situation whose future you have hopelessly released to die under a shrub in the wilderness.

Hear the good news.  Verse 17 says (Gen 21:17 NKJV), “God heard the voice of the lad... where he is.”   That phrase, “Where he is” is extremely significant to me.  The voice of Ishmael was sounding right at the intersection of “God promised this” and “there appears to be no way for this to happen,” and God heard him right where he was.  Take a deep breath and think about the reality of that!  God has heard the voice of “the lad” in your life, “where he is.”  “The-God-Who-Sees” indeed sees that circumstance and knows exactly what is going on.

God then instructed Hagar to “lift up the lad and hold him with your hand.”  God lavishly reiterated His promise and then made provision of a well in the wilderness for the fulfillment of the destiny of Ishmael.  The Scripture recounts, “So God was with the lad; and he grew…”  The Message vividly paraphrases it saying, “God was on the boy’s side as he grew up.”

Be encouraged.  The God Who Sees, sees you.  The God Who Hears, hears you.  The God Who can provide a well in the wilderness will provide all you need to “fill the skin with water, and give the lad a drink.”  I invite you to pray with thanksgiving the simple text from that song: “You are the One who sees me.  You are the One who hears me when I call.  Even when I’ve run away from You, You still speak my name, calling me back to you.  Even when my enemies oppress, and my soul is in distress, I will run into the shelter of You.  In You I find the grace to stay and face the trials in my way.  You’ll sustain and strengthen me as I go through.  You are the One who sees me.  You are the One who hears me when I call.  Even when I’ve run away from You, You still speak my name, calling me back to you.” Amen.

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