When Moms Feel UnseenSample

Step 4: God transforms us and sets us free.

We don’t know the specifics of Hagar’s relationship with El Roi after she returns to camp. Did her encounter with El Roi change how she interacts with Sarai and Abram or her vision of her community? How might she now see others who are marginalized or victimized like herself?

We won’t know Hagar’s full story this side of heaven. But the story reveals some astonishing transformations: Sarai does not adopt Ishmael as she had originally intended, so Hagar gets to keep her son; because Hagar returns to camp, Ishmael grows up with his father; and Abraham, so uncaring he allowed the mother of his unborn child to suffer terribly, grows to love Ishmael. In chapter 17, when Abraham learns that God’s covenant will be fulfilled through Sarah’s child, he begs God for Ishmael to live under God’s blessing as well.

Knowing that God sees her and hears her allowed Hagar to trust God’s promise that they would be free one day. Hagar’s difficult decision to trust and obey God puts her and her son in a place where God can care for and bless them until they are, in fact, free. That freedom is many years down the road, but even when freedom is incomplete, God is at work.

God is always inviting us into a process of transformation. Our role is to say yes. We say yes when we tell God the truth about our stories, trust God with our future and our children’s futures, and obey God’s commands. God does not transform us against our will; God honors our no. But when we, like Hagar, say yes, God always begins the work of transformation and setting us free.

Prayer:

Thank God that you are always at work, even when I can’t see it. Thank you for being a God of transformation and for always working to set me free. Amen.