These things are being taken figuratively: The women represent two covenants. One covenant is from Mount Sinai and bears children who are to be slaves: This is Hagar. Now Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children.
Galatians 4:24,25
I can’t begin to tell you how many times I said these words as a kid. Wait a minute, that’s not right. I never just said these words, it was more of an emotional cry that came up from my gut and gushed out of my mouth.
After all, it wasn’t fair that my older brother got to stay with friends while I had to spend countless hours in a car while we drove to Canada on a really boring vacation. Canada of all places. I mean, after all, what’s there to do in Canada?
Later on it wasn’t fair that I didn’t make the basketball team. It wasn’t fair that Debbi broke up with me. It wasn’t fair that I didn’t make the high school Honor Role without studying.
But my “not” fair days didn’t end with my childhood. Oh no. It wasn’t fair that I didn’t get the raise or the promotion. It wasn’t fair that the company eliminated my job in a downsizing move. It wasn’t fair that the truck carrying all our earthly possessions had engine trouble on one of our moves.
As your reading this short, abbreviated list of some of my major “not fair” memories, I’d bet my last dollar that you were thinking about some of your “not fair” moments. Admit it now. You were.
How does it feel to remember all those “not fair” times of life?” There are basically only two ways to think about our clashing with feelings of life being “not fair.”
Negative – I can’t speak for anyone else, but this is my life’s default setting. When my operating system comes on in the morning, it always looks at the world as a glass being half-full. I grew up in a house where the world was against us and feelings of life not being fair was modeled by my parents. My dad was especially negative about everything.
Positive – These are the people that I desperately want to be like. These are the people that I want to be around. They get hit upside the head by life just like I do, but they respond with joy and peace. They don’t mope around with their head hanging down. No, they face each and every new day with the quiet assurance that it’s going to be OK.
Some people were born with a certain personality. For others, it was modeled for them in their home. In either case, we all look at the world as being half-empty or half-full. For us or against us.
Hagar certainly had a lot of things in her life that pushed her towards that half-empty glass of life. She had lots of experience with disappointment and discouragement.
Hagar certainly could have cried out, “Not fair” to God. And she had lots of reason to feel that way. Here she is running from abuse, in the middle of a desert, and all alone and pregnant. With this heavy and painful load on her, something happens.
God reaches out to her. God speaks to her. It wasn’t her crying out to God, it was God watching over her. Watching out for her. It was God who started the conversation about where she was and why she was there in the first place.
God tells her that he sees her and has a solution for all her problems. It’s not a band-aid kind of immediate fix. No, it actually was going to be a hard road ahead of her. But God promises to be with her as he works out his plan.
Now, Hagar could have angerly shook her fist at God, blaming him for all her troubles. No one would have blamed her for saying that her life was “not fair.” But she does something different. Something remarkable. She speaks words of faith and hope.
You are the God who sees me
Genesis 16:13
Wow! With everything going south in her life, she hears the voice of God and realizes that God sees her. Right where she is: all alone, in a desert, pregnant. She tells the world that God is the kind of God that sees her where she is. He sees her as someone he loves and cares for.
Do you see and feel the pains of this world? Do you allow them to push you deeper down into the depths of despair?
Or do you hear the voice of God even in the middle of your storm? Do you believe like Hagar? She believed and experienced God as the one who sees her.
He does see you. He does care for you. And the only reason I can write these words is because Jesus died for us. He took it all, proving his live and dedication to us.
If anyone in the history of the world had the right to say “not fair,” it was Jesus. But instead, he says, “Father, forgive them[1].” That’s a message I need to hear and take a shower under. How about your?
[1] Luke 23:34
Comments