"And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven, and said unto her, What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.
Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand; for I will make him a great nation.
And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.
And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer."
Genesis 21:17-20
This is an interesting story about Hagar, kind of a subplot in the Bible around the story of Abraham, but not just a subplot to her, of course. We know very little about Hagar. She was an Egyptian bondwoman, so basically a servant/slave, and handmaid to Sarah. Sarah couldn't have children for a long time, so when Abraham was around 86, Sarah asked Abraham to sleep with her servant so that she could have children that way... hers perhaps because she would own them as she owned the servant? She gave her to him as a wife, but after Hagar found out that she was pregnant, it says that she despised Sarah. This, presumably because being able to bear childrean was a status thing back then (Genesis 16:4). Sarah went to Abraham about it, and he told her that she should reprimand her as her maid, not protecting her as a wife. And Sarah did, and Hagar ran away... and God sent an angel to promise her that the son she would have would prosper and basically promised her the same thing that he had promised Abraham as far as posterity... "that it should not be numbered for multitude" (Genesis 16:10), and sent her back to her mistress.
So, all that as background for this scene. At least from the ages for Abraham given in the story, Ishmael would have been about 14 at the time that Sarah asked Abraham to send Hagar away for mocking her and her own miraculous son. Abraham was upset by this, but God told him to do as Sarah asked (Genesis 21:12-13), so he did. Which brings us to this situation. Hagar wandered for a while till she ran out of water, then placed her son under a bush and walked a ways away because she didn't want to see him die. Then God sent an angel to remind her of God's promises, and her eyes were opened so she found water, and continued with her son on her journey.
I feel like our lives are a lot like Hagar's life sometimes. We often aren't really satisfied with our lot in life. We want to be more, and when we get an advantage now and then we start thinking we're better than other people, because we've been comparing ourselves to others all along. God has to remind us that we're where we are for a reason, that he has promises for us as well, but when things aren't working out we panic and believe it is our doom, rather than hoping in Christ and trusting that the Lord will take care of us. God was working a miracle in Hagar's life, bringing her and her posterity into the covenant, as well as freeing her from being a bondperson, giving her a life where she could raise her son and be blessed with numberless posterity... but it is hard sometimes to see the blessings and the possibilities when life is hard and you are so focused on the bad thing that you don't notice the hope that God has placed before you. Kind of like Laman and Lemuel. That journey was hard, and the whole time they wanted to go back, to live as they had before. Or the children of Israel, who wanted to return to slavery because at least they had a guaranteed food source.
Today, when things go bad, instead of giving up, let's turn to God and open our eyes to his hope. Maybe life isn't going the way we had previously hoped and dreamed, but God still has a plan for us, and he is leading us to where he wants us to be. There is water in the wilderness for us as well, if we turn to Christ and have faith is his guidance and his way. He will lead us to a better life.
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