From the Beginning: A Devotional Commentary on Genesis (XI)

In Genesis 21:11-20, we read the powerful story Abraham's concubine, an Egyptian girl named Hagar, who bore his first son, Ishmael. At the instigation of his jealous wife Sarah, Abraham sends his concubine Hagar and Ishamel away.  They're out into the desert with a bottle of water and a bit of bread, and things are looking desperate. It says: "When the water was all gone, she left her son under a bush, to die, and then went on a little way and sat down weeping." Death, it seems, is just around the corner for these two.

But then God appears to Hagar and promises to deliver them from their plight ("Do not fear," says the angel, "For God has heard the lad's cries ...") God sets her back on her feet, and then it says-- and this is the part I find so powerful-- it says: "God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water, where she filled the skin and gave Ishmael a drink."

That's all it says, really, and it's kinda mysterious: was the well always there and she just never noticed it before? Was it hidden and God pointed it out to her? Did it just appear, miraculously in that moment? I don't know. But whatever happened, God opened Hagar's eyes to see his deliverance right there in front of her, when she couldn't see it before.

It gets me wondering, how often have I been in what seemed at the time a desperate place, and God's deliverance-- his life-saving well in the wilderness-- was right there in front of me, only I couldn't see it for what it was? May each of us have our eyes opened, like Hagar, and especially when we're in places like Hagar was that day, may we have our eyes opened to see the deliverance of God for what it is, and where it is.