Lord, you see and you hear.

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Hagar in the desert by Marc Chagall.  Lord, you see and you hear.

           After God promised Abraham a progeny with his wife , they both laughed in disbelief, then took matters into their own hands. When remained barren she insisted that Abraham father a child with her slave Hagar. Predictably, the pregnancy provoked 's acrimony and jealousy, and so she banished Hagar to the desert. Yahweh found her there, told her to return, and gave her a promise almost identical to the promise made to Abraham, that He would make her descendants " too numerous to count. " The child to be born would bear a special name, too, Ishmael, which in Hebrew means " God hears, " for " the Lord has heard of your misery. " In turn, Hagar named Yahweh " the God who

sees me, " and in a delightful play on words exclaims, " I have seen the One who sees me. " (see Genesis 16:1–6).

           Fast forward fifteen years to our lectionary text for this week, which back tracks to the story of Ishmael. Isaac's birth reopened festering wounds and simmering jealousies, so once again drove Hagar and the teenage Ishmael into the desert. Wandering in the desert of Beersheba, her waterskins empty, she abandoned Ishmael to die " and began to sob " with the love of a mother for her child. The Genesis storyteller then once again invokes a delightful word play on Ishmael's name to drive home his point, saying, " God heard the boy crying. " This is something like saying " God heard the boy named God hears. " Yahweh then made an extraordinary promise to Hagar that is almost identical to the pivotal promise made to Abraham: " I will make him into a great nation...God was with the boy " (Genesis 21:18, 20; see 12:2).

           Ishmael, the heir of Islam, cousin to Jews and Christians (all three trace their ancestry to Abraham), bears a name that signals a promise to every human being. God is not deaf, dumb or blind. He is not implacable, impersonal, or impassible, without feeling or emotion. He is not an absentee landlord deity. No, Christians believe

that He sees every human misery, and that He hears every painful sob. As the Hebrews would learn after four centuries of slavery and exploitation under Egypt, " God heard their groaning " (Exodus 2:24). Knowing and believing that was the first step in their transformation and liberation from bondage. The same is true for us today: Ishmael, God

hears.Copyright © 2001–2010 by B. Clendenin. .