It's always in the desert where God finds us and it was the same for Hagar. She was an Egyptian; a slave; young; beautiful. Finding yourself pregnant by the mistress's husband is never a good living/working arrangement and female bullying is a horrible reality. She flees to the wilderness in despair. There's nothing like a pregnancy to remind you of the frailty of human life. Things happen to you beyond your control. Another being is brought into the world and they are your responsibility. You worry about the mess you are brining the child into. It's very probable that God doesn't exist and we must make our own way alone.
But then hope. A spring of water in the desert. This is where God finds Hagar and asks perhaps the oldest question of all: 'Where have you come from and where are you going?' (Genesis 16:8.)
It's not Existentialism after all!
Someone sees and Someone cares.
At the spring of water, there's a promise of blessing for the new life swimming within her. Hagar names the well 'Beer-lahai-roi' - 'the well of the Living One who sees me.'
God sees and finds a desperate, pregnant woman and she responds in a beautiful act of divine re-naming.
It's all in the eyes...
