Hagar and the Invisible

“Am I only a God nearby, and not a God far away,” declares the LORD.
“Can anyone hide in secret places so that I cannot see him,” declares the LORD.
“Do not I fill heaven and earth,” declares the LORD
-- Jeremiah 23:23-24, NIV


I’ve got a secret. I have a super power. Yes, that’s correct – a super power.

I’m absolutely convinced that with the bat of an eye or the twinkle of the nose I can transform myself into the Invisible Woman. I am that good!

OK. I can’t really become invisible, but it sure feels like I can sometimes.

Let me illustrate:

I’m at a party with a group of other women. I’m standing in the foyer of the party room looking in. It’s like I’m there but I’m set apart in a hazy, suspended state watching them interact. There -- but not -- if you know what I mean. Stand beside me and look in.

If you look closely, you can see them laughing, talking, and having a good time.

Oh, how I long to join them – be one of them. I take a breath and look around waiting to make my move. Since my “special power” keeps me from being seen I can hover on the sidelines contemplating my choices. Should I relinquish my “invisibility” and join the group, or stay put in the loneliness, but safety, of my invisibility.

Confession time. I don’t like parties or crowds very much. They produce in me a sense of anxiety that I can’t adequately describe. But I always want to be invited to get togethers, and I usually go. It’s just that times like these raise my self-consciousness level to a whole new height. In a group, I can become so focused on myself that my vision is distorted to the point that I am the one who can’t see what’s going on. It’s a progression of distortion that begins with “Hey, can’t you see me? Look at me! I’m over here!” This turns to, “Why can’t you see me?” Why don’t you care?” To “Nobody sees me. Nobody cares.”

Feeling alone in a crowd can be one of the loneliest feelings in the world. It’s worse than being truly alone because you feel like you don’t belong in the group – like a third wheel in a twosome. Awkward. Invisible, or worse, having someone (like yourself) wish you were.

I asked my two teenage daughters if they’d ever felt invisible in a group and if so, what that felt like.

My 18-year old, Meagan, spoke up quickly, referencing a recent incident. “You mean like when we’re all sitting at the dinner table and I’m telling a story and somebody else at the table changes the subject in the middle of it?”

Ouch! Yes, just like that.

“Well, if you’ll recall, Mom, I got up and left the table. How do you think I felt?”

I actually didn’t recall it until she reminded me. Her words, which pierced my heart, answered my question. (‘I felt like I wasn’t even there, so I might as well have not been there.’)

Everyone wants to be seen and acknowledged. When we’re present but don’t feel like we’re seen, can bring a sense of worthlessness to our being. Crudely put, we can feel like something to be scraped off the bottom of someone’s shoe.

That’s what happens when we measure our worth by what we sense we bring (or don’t bring) to the party when we are in the room. It takes our focus off those around us, and places it on self – with a heightened self-awareness, self-submersion, and dare I say it? Even, sometimes, self-pity.

My heart goes out to my daughter and all people who feel like they don’t “fit in”. I know the pain first hand. Been there. Done that. Could print my own t-shirt.

But navigating my way inward toward my own heart-felt pain can steer me away from the Truth. The Truth of the One who really sees me.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote:

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, NIV)

Our hearts can lie to us and tell us we are invisible. So how do I assure myself I’m not really invisible?

I could take a poll when I’m among friends, and ask who can see me and who can’t. I could say, “Somebody, slap me across the face!” And see if anyone does it. I could set myself on fire and see if anyone comes running with a bucket of water.

Or I could draw insight and encouragement from the example of a lonely, desperate young woman in the Old Testament who realized she wasn’t invisible when she had an encounter with the Almighty God, the Holy of Holies, the God who saw her as no one else ever had.

Her name was Hagar. She was an Egyptian slave girl brought into the family of a prominent and upright man named Abram to serve his wife Sarai. He was the man who God said would become the “Father of Many Nations.”

However, this probably didn’t make Hagar feel any more important than if she’d been the lone soul working for an indigent potato farmer named Homer. She was one of many servants in Abram’s household. But nevertheless she stood out to Sarai, not because of her intelligence, or her skill as a handmaid, but because she had an available, working womb.

You see Sarai had a problem. She was caught between a promise and a biological time clock. God had promised her a child, but she was getting older and older. In fact, she was just plain old. At last look at the calendar, she was in her eighties. Who has a baby when they are that old? Hadn’t she laughed when God told her she’d have a baby? It seemed like an absurd promise. But Sarai knew God always kept His promises, so maybe He planned to fulfill that promise in a more logical way with a younger woman. And maybe He needed some help moving it along. And here was this young slave girl. Attractive – Probably. Available – Certainly. And willing – What did it matter? She belonged to the master’s wife. The servant would do what she was told.

Hagar was told to have sexual relations with Abram and bear his child for the purpose of giving it to her mistress to raise as her own. Whether she knew all the details of the plan or not, who knows. Who knows what the mistress told her to get her to do this. Maybe she just ordered her to lay down with Abram. Whatever the case, it worked. Hagar became pregnant and when she began to show all the progressive signs of pregnancy -- the morning sickness, the swelled extremities, and perhaps that certain glow that comes with the privilege of bearing a child -- Sarai began to sense she’d made a big mistake.

Resentment set in. “Who did this slave girl think she was? Did she think she was better than her mistress?” Sarai may have thought, “After all, if it weren’t for me, she’d still just be brushing my hair and sweeping my floors.”

Yes, the master’s wife was unhappy. All she wanted to do was un-do the mistake she had made. Get rid of this woman who had upset her happy home. Make her feel like the nothing she really was.

And then there was Hagar the slave girl. Who cared what she thought? What she felt? Caught in the middle between her mistress and the child growing in her womb.

Life had never been easy for her. Her destiny probably spelled out before she could even understand. From the beginning, she’d been herded up like property and sold into servitude. Then singled out as a concubine ordered to produce a child. And when she complied, she was mistreated and abused like cheap trash. Her pain felt by no one else. She was nwanted. Uncared for. Unseen. It was enough to make any woman want to run away. And that’s what she did.

Hagar ran as far away as she could go. She ran into a hot, dry desert with feelings of desperation, worthlessness and perhaps even suicide. Were it not for the child she was carrying she might lie down and die. After all, who would notice she was even gone. Who would care? They would just get another slave to replace her. Maybe even another vacant womb to bear a child.

Hagar’s life could’ve ended there. But God intervened.

In the middle of that desert, Hagar discovered herself. Someone saw her and told her who she was. And that someone was the God of the whole universe.

The Bible says an angel of the LORD came to her and said:
“Hagar, slave of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” (Gen. 16:8a, NIV)
It was like one of those lawyer/cop questions that this angel most likely knew the answer to. He just wanted to make sure Hagar knew that HE KNEW.
Hagar’s reply:
“I’m running away from my mistress Sarai.”
Again, the angel knew. His reply back:
“Go back to your mistress and submit to her.”
The angel added,
“I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.”
“You are now pregnant
“and you will give birth to a son.
You shall name him Ishmael,
for the LORD has heard of your misery.
He will be a wild donkey of a man;
his hand will be against everyone
and everyone’s hand against him,
and he will live in hostility
toward all his brothers.”
(Gen. 16:9-12, NIV)
OK. Now this part of the angel’s prophecy doesn’t sound too encouraging. Who wants to be told that her child will become “a wild donkey of a man” or that he will live a life in a constant struggle with others?
But Hagar found a sense of comfort. I don’t think it was the content of the message that comforted her. Her reply to the angel of the LORD (who many believe to be God Himself) spoke volumes about the source of her comfort:
“You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.”
It was here in the barrenness and loneliness of the desert that an Egyptian slave girl gave God a new name: El-Roi, which means “the God Who Sees.”
And as hard as it must have been to return to the source of her pain, God’s word to Hagar encouraged and strengthened her to do just that. It is the power of being seen. The power of being acknowledged and given a sense of worth. Not by another person, but by a Holy God who found her and called her out in the middle of nowhere.
If God can see a slave girl weeping in the middle of a huge desert, can He also see me in my own despair in the middle of Little Rock, Arkansas? Can He see me standing alone and lonely in the middle of a crowd? Can He see me feeling demeaned when I’m interrupted while telling my story at the dinner table? Can He see me crying out in prayer over a prodigal child? Can He look down from heaven and help me pick up the pieces of a broken relationship? Provide for me and my family in the middle of a financial crisis?
Oh, yes He can! And in a big way because He is still the “God who sees.” – El Roi
Consider David, the king and prophet from the Old Testament. He wrote this Psalm to God while he was on the run from King Saul who wanted to kill him. At a time when he felt alone, desperate and hated by so many:
“I sought the LORD, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.
This poor man called, and the LORD heard him;
he saved him out of all his troubles.
The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”
(Psalm 34: 4-7)
These words bring so much comfort to me today because in them I am reminded that I am never alone when I cry out to God. He is there even before I form the words in my mind.
David went on to write:
“The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous,
and his ears are attentive to their cry;
but the face of the LORD is against those who do evil,
to blot out their name from the earth.”
(Psalm 34: 15-16)

I can’t really make myself invisible because even if no other person could see me, God can. I don’t really have super powers, but I serve a God who does, and He uses His super powers for good to help those who cry out to him. He is all knowing, all loving and all seeing.

It’s good to see and be seen.

UNMET EXPECTATION = DISAPPOINTMENT = LIFE LESSON

I was a little frustrated. I had no right to be, but I was. Unmet expectation has a way of doing that. But it's not always a bad thing.

I went in to my Bible study last night expecting to discuss the lesson I’d worked on the week before – the lesson the Bible study author wrote for us to discuss – the lesson I thought I needed and had anticipated discussing for six weeks -- but that’s not what happened. I was disappointed to say the least.

Disappointment occurred in two stages.

For the past six weeks, our women’s Bible study group has been going through Brave, a study written by Christian author Angela Thomas. It’s a study that’s prompted a lot of my personal writing of late.

At the beginning of the study, I looked through the lessons and zeroed in on Lesson 5 entitled “I Am Invisible.” Intrigued by the title and provoked by the concept of “invisibility,” I dove into the lesson, which centered on the plight of Hagar, a woman in the Bible I had always felt a sort of “kinship” with, but never understood why.

She hadn’t shown the courage and faith of a Biblical heroine like Esther or Ruth. She didn’t give birth to one of the Patriarchs like Sarah or Rebekah (In fact, she was a slave girl who’d given birth to the man who would become the forerunner of Islam). But she had shown bravery in the face of tribulation, and had been singled out by God for a personal visit and a place in world history. Why? In part, because out of obedience to God, she turned around and returned to the source of her pain. Seems like sort of a dubious honor. Feels like my life on many days. That’s why I can relate to her. That’s why I anticipated the discussion and counted ahead to this lesson.

(I’m not going to write about my kinship with Hagar or feelings of invisibility in this installment. That comes in the next one. This installment is about disappointment and discipline and how God is using them in me.)

Disappointment #1 came when I looked at the calendar and realized that our family vacation was going to fall during the week that our group was supposed to discuss Lesson 5. I remember thinking in frustration, “Well, that figures!”

But God intervened. Much to my delight, I found out that our group was going to take a break the week we were gone (because it was a holiday week) and I wouldn’t miss the discussion after all. I would get to be a part of the lesson I had eagerly anticipated for five weeks and the one that I felt spoke volumes to who I was and what I’d been feeling my whole life. I believed I wanted and needed the catharsis that would come from discussing this lesson with the other women in my group. In other words, I was planning to use the lesson that week for my own personal group therapy.

So during our vacation and I read through the lesson and answered the questions eagerly anticipating the discussion and the fellowship that would come from it. I looked forward to shared empathy with my “Sisters of the Shared Invisibility.”

However -- Disappointment #2 -- that’s not the way it worked out.

My friend, Debbie, who led the discussion last night, had other ideas. She took the lesson in a different direction “turning the concept of invisibility on its head” as she put it. As a knee-jerk response (emphasis on ‘jerk’) I decided from the get-go that I might just shut it down and go to a different place in my head because I wasn’t going to get the “therapy” or the answers from the lesson I wanted.

Debbie, instead, prompted by God to do something different, focused on the “other” characters of the lesson: Abram/Abraham, Sarai/Sarah and Ishmael and elements of their character. Debbie’s an excellent teacher who puts a lot of prayer, study and thought into her teaching. I could write volumes about her teaching (not to mention what she means to my life personally), but it’s not her teaching that’s germane to this writing because it’s not the teaching she brought that taught me last night. It was what God showed me afterwards that was pertinent.

Teaching comes in all different kinds of packages and through and all different kinds of voices.

Let me just tell you that I couldn’t be mad at Debbie too long especially for being obedient to God. She is one of my best friends, and I know her well enough to know that she listens to God when He speaks to her and she is, more often that not, obedient to His leading. I don’t know why God led her to take the discussion in this direction, but I didn’t doubt for a second that He had.

I just realized I wasn’t going to get what I wanted from it, so I had two choices: (1) I could be angry or (2) I could pray and ask God to help me be patient and listen. I think I chose a combination of the two.

I listened but it was like the modern-day parable of the child riding in the back seat of the car:

The story goes that the driver, presumably the mother, is driving down a road and looks in her rear view mirror. In horror, she sees her child out of the seatbelt, standing up in the back seat of the car. She immediately pulls the car over and stops. She turns around and emphatically tells the child to sit down and fasten the seatbelt. After a brief stare down the child reluctantly sits down and fastens the seat belt. The mother puts the car in drive and continues on to her destination. In a short while, from the backseat, she hears a quiet voice mutter the words: “I’m sittin’ down on the outside, but I’m standin’ up on the inside.”

That’s how I am when I don’t get my way. I’ll reluctantly do what I’m supposed to do, but I may not enthusiastically engage in it. I may even stare daggers into your back when you tell me to do it -- like the child in the back seat.

So when it was all said and done I walked away from Bible study frustrated and a wee bit angry. I felt I’d been thrown an unfair curve. I went home, still chewing on frustration and confusion, and trying to decipher what it all meant.

When I got home, I shared my frustration with my husband. I also shared the subject matter of the lesson with Bob and my disappointment at not getting to discuss it. I explained my kinship with Hagar – my own feelings of invisibility and how this lesson was ‘written for me’ and how this interpretation of the lesson that was supposed to help me with my “invisibility complex” actually made me feel more invisible because it didn’t address my issues.

Bob responded in a very “Bob-like” way. I listened. Then for a brief time, I really didn’t like him or his response very much:

He said, “Did you ever stop and think that God knew you could feed yourself from the lesson and tonight’s discussion wasn’t really for you?”

I swear sometimes I could be bleeding from my eyes and instead of sympathy; I’d get a life lesson on what God was trying to show me through the blood that clouded my vision. (I do love you, honey!)

Well, no, I didn’t think about that, and thank you for pointing that out instead of agreeing with me.

Wait minute! You mean it wasn’t about me? It wasn’t just for me?

It’s like God stared down into my soul and whispered the first line of Chapter One of Rick Warren’s book, The Purpose Driven Life, into the depth of me: “It’s not about you.”

If not me, then who for? I don’t know for sure. I believe it must’ve been meant for one of the 20 or so other women in the room. Only God knows and Debbie put her teaching in His hands to distribute as He saw fit. I know Debbie prayed for it to reach somebody who needed it and I also pray that it did. And in a way, it taught me as well. Probably not in the way she’d intended. But isn’t that just like God:

“’For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,’ declares the LORD.” (Isaiah 55:8, NIV)

So, my lesson last night didn’t come really from the study at all, but from my own reaction to it. In it, I was reminded of several bits of wisdom, including these:

1) Bible study groups are not always time for my own personal therapy. (In other words, it’s not always ‘about me’ or ‘for me.’)
2) Lessons can be learned from disappointment and unmet expectations and how I deal with them.
3) Don’t discount any teaching that comes from God, even if it doesn’t seem like it applies to you. (2 Timothy 3:16)

Ok, message received.

Next stop – Hagar and the Invisible. (Sounds like a comic strip. . . )