“Then, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar her maid, the Egyptian, and gave her to her husband Abram to wife…” Gen 16:3
and
“Hagar, Sarai’s maid, where have you come from, and where are you going?” Gen 16:7
I wonder occasionally why this story, Hagar’s story, has become pivotal to my faith walk. Perhaps it is the significance Hagar has in Black spiritualities. Perhaps. I think though, that for me Hagar is a mother. Kin. As I think about all of the times, especially as an atheist, that I took the collection of my experiences and dared to talk into the night. I used to sit up for hours as a child at night and contemplate the universe. My abuse and trauma has meant years of wrestling with the notion of “a God of love.” Hagar’s story has helped to name those issues I have in my own story, and those things that I still find angering and mysterious relating to God. While most preaching that I have ever heard on her have been either dismissive or bordering on Islamophobia, I know that there is something that draws me close. Hagar’s flight into the wilderness pulls at the strings of my heart. I can only imagine what her emotional and spiritual state was. There is no strong evidence to determine whether she was a believer in Abram and Sarai’s God and yet, as a voice spoke out of the wilderness…we find that Hagar does not draw back.