Daily Lesson for January 29, 2014

Today's Lesson from Genesis 16:

8 And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai." . . . 10 The angel of the Lord also said to her, "I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” . . . 13 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.”

Yikes, this is ugly.

Abraham and Sarah, the chosen couple of promise, are having trouble conceiving. In what must have been a tense and grief-stricken conversation, Sarah offers Hagar, Sarah's Egyptian slave girl, for Abraham to sleep with. Abraham, old but not yet wise (as the saying goes, "There's no fool like an old fool."), obliges and soon enough Hagar is showing. Her young fertility then becomes the target for Sarah's abusive anger. Next thing we know, Hagar has run away into the desert - probably resigned to take her own life and that of the child in her womb.

Wow, and we thought our families were complicated. How did this get into the Bible?

Here's how. It comes from what happens to Hagar in the desert. An angel of the LORD appears to her and encourages her not to end her life in the desert because the angel says the LORD has listened to her affliction and is watching over her, her unborn child, and all the succeeding generations to come. So, Hagar named that place in the desert, "The place of the God who sees me."

Life can be complicated, ugly, and downright destructive. We are all born into systems of disfunction, manipulation and even abuse. The message of this text is that God is with us all. God sees us each and all and sends his angels to us to encourage us to choose life - however difficult living may be.

I am including a link to one of my favorite songs by Andrae Crouch. Andrae is of the African American people, a people who have known so much of the troubles of Hagar and what it means to go on living and trusting the LORD through it all:

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CvIxwc90BEI