Day 4 of #16days - Sarai and Hagar

Yesterday I started to speak about the consequences of the oppression of Sarai being outworked in horizontal violence. In Genesis 16 we catch up with Sarai at a time when she has now had a long heartbreaking struggle with infertility. She is aware of the promise of God on the family but those longed for descendants were not materialising. This was Sarai's 'pain in childbearing' and I can imagine how deep that cut. 

Adding to Sarai's discomfort would be the daily living reminder of her humiliation and abandonment at her husbands hand in Egypt - her female servant was an Egyption girl named Hagar. 

What followed can only be described as chaos in the family. Sarai felt like a failure, offered her servant as a wife to her husband. In heartbreaking repeat of her own experience, Sarai took the agency of another woman and sexually enslaved her to her husband. Hagar, a young woman taken from her home town probably against her wishes as part of Pharaohs transaction with Abram for Sarai is now forced to sleep with an old man, a man she possibly felt was dishonourable considering what happened in Egypt. Both Sarai and Hagar ultimately treated one another with contempt. Hurt people, hurt people. 

In the end though, God saw both women. We know Sarai's story but Hagar has something beautiful to show us. When Hagar fled the cruelties of Sarai, God found her in the desert and appeared to her in the form of an angel. He promised her a multitude of offspring through her soon to be born son. This is no message telling women to return to abusers, it is a clear message of being seen. Indeed Hagar named the well where He appeared to her as "the well of the one who sees". She was unseen to this point, sent away from her family and everything she knew and held dear, forced into surrogacy by her mistress and now in the desert but, he did not leave her alone. She felt seen.


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