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.