At the Well of Beer-lahai-roi

Once upon a time there was a girl who grew up loving the mountains and the fresh air. She made mud "cakes" with her little brother and was fascinated by baby frogs and snakes. This little girl poured over her King James version of the Bible and never went a night without reading that precious book. But childhood days and rumpled braids never seem to last. As the days flew by, myriads of things changed in that life--and heart. And now here I sit, now only 27 days from 20 years old, and I wonder what happened to that little girl. I wish that somehow I could bring her back.

But time doesn't work that way.

Today I struggle. Every moment I struggle, whether it be to live the faith I claim, or to flee the wrong that my baser nature craves. No one will ever be able to convince me that the battle between wrong and right does not exist--I've been cut too deeply to believe that the knife isn't real. But despite all my struggle and all my pain, the One who demands all of my heart and all my devotion walks with me through each day. It is so easy to focus on a part of who God is, say for example, His justice, and forget that He is also a God of love. This God that demands my all made the tiny blooms of the plant that was waiting inside it's seed, waiting for me to give it water to grow. He made that beauty--a flower so small that we deemed it appropriate to name it a forget-me-not. And yet God sees even its tiniest bloom.

It reminds me of the story of Hagar in Genesis chapter 16. Hagar was a slave of Sarai, the wife of Abram (later called Abraham, who was the father of the nation of Israel). Now Sarai and Abram could not have any children, and they had been given a promise by God that a great nation would come from them. But they were old, and though they had believed God once, His words became less real to them every passing day. In those days, it was acceptable in the people's eyes to have children by their servants, so, Sarai gave Abram her slave Hagar to have a child by.

I can't even imagine what that would have been like. Here Hagar is, serving her mistress, living comfortably in her master's house, and then she is told she will be used to give Abram children. If I had been her I would have protested vehemently, but, as the story goes, Hagar became pregnant. When she realized that she was pregnant, she "looked in contempt" on her mistress Sarai, and Sarai was angered. I don't know about you, but when I am angry I lash out, and that is exactly what Sarai did. Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her. And the angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. I wonder if at this point Hagar is just wishing that she could die. Here she is, first a servant taken from her homeland of Egypt, then given to her master, now pregnant, oppressed enough to run away, and, as a cherry to top the cake, what every runaway servant dreads--she's found.

But the angel of the Lord tells her to go back to her mistress and to submit to her. He also tells Hagar that she will indeed have a son, and that his name should be Ishmael. From him would come offspring without number, just as the Lord had promised to Abram, and even though Abram and Sarai had felt the need to take God's work into their own hands, God would be faithful to His promise. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction... So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, "You are a God of seeing," for she said, "Truly here I have seen him who looks after me." Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered. And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

God is truly a God of seeing. If I was a seminary student or a pastor I might delve a little more into depth about the implications of this story and all the things we can learn from it, but my little mind would just like to think on how my God is a God of seeing.

He sees all my pain and all the injustices of my life. He notices the tiny flowers that bloom and every hair that falls from my head. You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book? (Psalm 56:8) The Lord saw all of Hagar's secret pains, all of her problems, and her mistakes, but yet He had a plan to bring nations from her womb. God must have a plan for my pain as well--a plan for my moment by moment struggles. I can take comfort in the fact that no matter what happens, He sees--even if I am in the wilderness, alone and hiding at a well named Beer-lahai-roi.