Tucked away in the crazy story about how God gave two really old people a son that He’d promised is the tragic story of how those old people mistreated a servant whose name meant runner.
Oddly enough, we meet her while she is having a conversation with God while doing the very thing she was named for. She’s fled from her boss, and is now on the run in the desert.
Spoiler alert: by the end of the story, this woman will become the only person in the Bible to give God a name, and while that’s the part of the story that we often talk about, I’m drawn to something different today.
Where have you been? Where are you going? Basically, the Lord looked at a runner, and asked her why she’s still running?, and she had a good reason to run: she was being mistreated. All of this brings me to the part that captivated me as I read it this morning:
It’s the last thing I would have expected him to say, and it’s a different side of this all-too-familiar story about God seeing us in our greatest times of need and hurt.
He does see us, but because He sees us, He knows more than we do what we need to do next.
If we were writing this story today, we’d elaborate on a God who sees us and understands us the decision we’ve made to run as far away as possible from the difficult situations we’ve been in. We’d say that we spoke “our truth” and that God agrees with it.
(Allow me to hit the pause button and emphasize that there are times and situations that require us to run, and the Bible even highlights that in other places. Don’t take what I’m writing here as a blanket statement that we should all just “suck it up” and stay in toxic places. Hang with me a bit longer while I try to point out what we can take away from the answer God game Hagar, and then as I try to flesh out what that might look like in each of our lives.)
My point here is that the God who sees us, knows us. He knew that the woman named runner needed to stop running. He knew that there was something greater in her (He’d made her, after all) that would only be revealed by going back with a posture of submission to the very person who had pushed her away.
You’re going to want me to explain all of that, but I can’t. The only thing I’m sure about is that being seen by God also means being open to what God might say about what he sees, and more times than not, what He sees isn’t what we wanted Him to see.
A runner. An offense. A root of bitterness beginning to grow. A repeated cycle of toxic escape masked as “our truth” when the healing He wants for us can only come in putting roots down and staying.
“Go back, and submit.”
Four words that must have been excruciating for Hagar to hear, and yet as soon as she heard them, she knew that she’d been seen, and that her motives had been exposed because it was after that command that she gave God the only name a human ever gave Him.
“You are the God who sees me.”
Today, let Him see you, and then allow Him to lead you.
What if the path He sends you on takes you right back to the place you were running from? Go back, and submit because now you won’t be running from something, but returning with Someone, and His presence in that place will make all the difference.
Photo by Fabian Struwe on Unsplash
