We don’t know what Hagar knew of God before she fled to the desert, but we do know that He knew her. And He cared for her. Deeply. We know that He pursued her in the wilderness when her void-of-hope life was a tangled mess and full of mistreatment. And we know that while externally she remained an outsider to the fledgling Abrahamic family, she became enveloped within God’s rich mercy and included in His promise. 

Strengthened in her spirit by the One she named El Roi, the God Who Sees Me, Hagar returned to her mistress Sarah. For the next 14 years she raised her son Ishmael under Sarah’s watchful eye, until the fateful day when a son was miraculously birthed from Sarah’s post-menopausal body. When Ishmael mocked her child of promise on the day of his feast, Sarah exploded, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son!” 

Abraham regretfully packed some food and water in preparation for Hagar’s second flight into the desert as he cut relational ties with his firstborn. Truth be told, no one knew what would become of this discarded mother and son; and probably few cared.  

But El Roi saw, knew, and pursued. 

In the desert of Beersheba, their meager rations quickly evaporated, and Hagar despairingly separated herself from her son so that she would not see him perish. But El Roi, never too distant to hear His children’s cries, spoke into her life: “Lift the boy up; take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” And for the second time in the wilderness, El Roi opened this precious slave woman’s eyes. She and her son received His miraculous provision and drank His living water in the desert. 

He made a way, when there seemed to be no way, for them to flourish.