Lessons From Across the Pool
When I was the tender age of seven or eight, I was the shyest flower ever to grace the mountains of western North Carolina. If I did anything to call attention to myself, I died slowly inside, horrified by the realization that people could actually see me, and that realization would bloom outward on my skin in patchy red and white waves of embarrassment.
So during this particular summer, my mother enrolled me in swimming lessons at the local park, where I went daily along with probably thirty or so other children, not one of whom I knew. There were enough children for at least three different teachers and three different classes, and the pool was large enough that all classes happened simultaneously. The parents could watch from their place on the second floor of the pool house.
I was in the beginner class. The first day of lessons passed well enough; there were probably ten to twelve kids in my class with me, and we spent it in the shallow end of the pool while the more advanced classes took the middle and deep ends.
By the second day, I felt incrementally more confident, having already experienced a day's class. I changed in the bathhouse while my mother went upstairs, and then I proceeded outside with a myriad of other children who all separated into their various groups.
I stopped short, horrifyingly aware that I didn't recognize any of the teachers. That is, I'm sure that the teacher I'd had the day before was the one I had that day, too, only she had done her hair differently, or worn a different bathing suit. Whatever happened... I had no idea who she was.
Heart pounding, I eyed the children in each class, and all of them looked different as well. I had no idea where I was supposed to be.
The water was deeper than I was expecting. I had one leg in, my toe pointed to full extension, seeking the floor of the pool and unable to find it, when I heard, horrifyingly, my name shouted across the water.
Everything went completely silent (or at least it did in my memory; it may have only temporarily gotten a little quiet). My teacher stood across the pool with the rest of my classmates, calling my name, beckoning. "You're in the wrong class; we're over here!"
Do you have any idea the eternity of that walk back around the pool by myself in full view of three large classes and alllll their parents?
I remembered every iota of that experience for years, and every time, my neck and cheeks roasted as hot as a bad sunburn.
The point is: the instructor knew who I was, but it wasn't until I had left the class, turned for another path, experienced another experience - that I recognized the instructor.
Enter the triangle of Genesis 16: Sarai-Abram-Hagar.
Sarai's point of view:
Abram and Sarai still have not received the promise of God: a son of their own flesh and blood. They've waited and waited. Abram is 85 years old, Sarai not far behind, and biological signs of fertility are likely long past.
Surely God made a mistake. Or we're not hearing Him right. Maybe He meant something different from what He told us.
She takes God's promise into her own hands, makes her own interpretation, and comes up with her own solution.
Good thing nobody does that anymore...
"Abram, here's my maidservant, Hagar." She gives full permission to her husband to consummate with Hagar what belongs to marriage, so that God will fulfill His promise according to her own interpretation.
She did not see correctly.
She picks a swimming class and joins in, certain that she is fulfilling the expectations placed on her. She doesn't wait to verify; she plows ahead without double-checking.
I could go on and on about the ramifications of this: how she stripped Abram of his own autonomy by making this choice, how, like Eve in the Garden of Eden who "gave the fruit to Adam" to partake in the same sin, through Sarai's choice, she led more than herself down a wrong path...
I'll stop there for now.
Hagar's point of view:
Hagar does as she is commanded and sleeps with her master. Please understand, just because it is in Scripture does not mean God placed a blanket blessing on this action. It was not in God's plan, nor was it His command. But it happened, and Hagar conceived.
Whatever attitude she allows into her heart, it is noticeable. So much so that Sarai complains about it to Abram, and Abram allows Sarai to take care of it however she sees fit.
Sarai sees fit to mistreat Hagar. And since Abram is the leader of his people and Sarai is his "real" wife, Hagar runs away with no place to go.
She can't see ahead; she can't see anything at all. She's lost her place, her purpose. She's lost every tenet of life to which she's clung.
She is blind, groping in the dark, completely lost.
God's point of view:
Many scholars believe that the next person in the story - the angel of the Lord - was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ to Hagar. He sees her sitting by a spring in the desert, and He appears to her. "Where have you come from and where are you going?"
He already knows, obviously; He asks anyway. In the teaching world, this is called "activating prior knowledge." He knows, but he wants to make sure that she understands before he calls her to a higher order of thinking: analyzation of her circumstances, synthesizing all thought threads, and then creating a new circumstance from the old (Bloom's Taxonomy Levels 4-6, for my education friends).
Hagar explains her story, and the angel of the Lord gives her a name for her son: Ishmael, meaning: "God hears."
When the angel leaves, Hagar gives a name to the Lord: "You are the God who sees me," for she says, "I have now seen the One who sees me."
He saw her destitution. He saw her loneliness. He saw her desperation. He saw her despair.
So He met with her and told her to return to her home. She went home, because the Lord saw her...
And she recognized Him after He saw her.
She walked back around that pool; she went back to where she belonged. No longer homeless, cast-off, she went back to a place of belonging. Her eyes were opened.
The New Testament version of this shows up in Luke 24:30-32: "When [Jesus] was at the table with them, He took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized Him, and He disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?'"
God is always clear-sighted. Recognition is a powerful thing. It gives us autonomy, fulfillment, and purpose to be recognized in the place where we are. Note that God didn't come to Hagar when she was still living in the house of one of the most powerful men in Canaan at the time. He came to her when she was destitute and homeless, unsure what to do next or where to go.
When we recognize God, when we truly see Him, we know where home is. We can see Him waving across the pool. "Over here! This is where you belong. You're in the wrong place. Come back!"
Oh Lord, there is so much hurt and desperation in our country right now. We can't see what You're doing; we're under a dark cloud of our own making.
We've walked with hatred... and been fed by it.
We've walked with judgment... and felt pride in it.
We've walked with rage... and been fueled by it.
And in all of it, we've lost our perspective of where we as Your people belong.
You see us, God; You see right through all the obstacles we've put up; You see right into our hearts and recognize the blinders we've placed over our eyes.
We've taken up our own chains and clung to them, and we've plugged our ears when You've asked us to lay down the heavy links.
God, help us to recognize You. Open our eyes; peel back the layers that keep us from seeing You. Return us as a people, Lord, to Your throne, to bow our proud necks and humble ourselves. Work in our hearts.
Lord, whatever the outcome of these elections, whatever path lies in front of us as a nation, let it lead ultimately to You, no matter what that looks like. In plenty or in want. In sickness or in health. In dire circumstances or in prosperity. In war or in peace. Jesus, You are the King of kings, the Lord of lords. You are the ultimate Ruler, and our hope must be in You.
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