Corrected and Blessed

DEVOTION

GENESIS

CORRECTED AND BLESSED

Gen 16:7-10

7 The angel of the LORD found Hagar near a spring in the desert; it was the spring that is beside the road to Shur. 8 And he said, "Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?"  "I'm running away from my mistress Sarai," she answered. 9 Then the angel of the LORD told her, "Go back to your mistress and submit to her." 10 The angel added, "I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count."

NIV

Although we did not deal with the exchange between Sarai and Hagar we are at this moment of her running off. Perhaps we should visit that interaction for a moment. We have seen Hagar, having been given to Abram and she did become pregnant and she therefor began to despise her mistress. We are not certain why this was. Had she not wanted to be used by Abram for this purpose? Was she angry her mistress Sarai made here slept with Abram and thus become pregnant? Maybe she did not want to be used like this by them. Even though she was as servant, she was a person with feelings and desires for her own life. But because she became as she did in the way she treated Sarai, which was wrong, Sarai began to mistreat her as well, mostly even worse, as she was the mistress and Hagar was the servant. So we might well see Hagar as the victim of a conspiracy contrived by the hands her masters, the hands of humans taking their fate into their own hands. So here she is running off to try to bring some order to her life, again taking her life into her own hands. But God intervenes and makes her see he has things under control. He sees her distress, her misery and he, being God has compassion on her. What he tells her is something surely she heard he had told Abram. It would certainly make sense that all the household of Abram would have known what God told him about his descendants would outnumber the stars. This is the exact thing God tells Hagar. The child she will bear will be the beginning of a number of descendants that cannot be numbered. How did this make Hagar feel? Although she was in fact the victim of cruelty, God reassured her she would not be left along, that he would also bless her. We should note that Hagar was from Egypt and thus she surely had worshipped many gods, as we know this was the life of the Egyptians. We will see her response next, but from that we know she understood this was the God who sees her and the God she saw. This was not one of her many unseen gods. She had to know who he was. He tells her to go back to submit to her mistress Sarai. What do we learn from her? There may be times when we are not treated as fairly as we think we should be. Although within our society today there is way too much victim mentality, we may find ourselves being unfairly treated. However, many times this would be due to our thinking more highly of ourselves then we should. Certainly Hagar had some self-esteem, or thought more of herself then she should have, which would have fueled her wrong attitude toward Sarai. We have to see we are seen by God and through we may not visually see him, we see him through his word, we see who he is, his character and how he cares for us. When we are mistreated in anyway by anyone, we should not take on any victim mentality. We should never despise anyone for any unfair treatment of behavior toward us. In fact we are told we should love our enemies. Not that all people who treat us poorly are our enemies, but that principle applies to all men. It should not matter how we are treated. What matters is how we treat others. We cannot run away from every situation in which we find ourselves being mistreated, as Hagar did. God instructed her to return and submit to her mistress, but that he would also bless her in her situation. We need to make the best of any and all situations in life, knowing God has a plan for us. There can be no victims with God at our side. We cannot never be a victim as we are a child of the Lord God Most High. But having said that, there may be times when we might fail to understand exactly who we are and feel like we have been unfairly treated at work, or by a family member, or by the church, meaning the pastor, or board or those who feel they have some importance in church matters. This type of feeling is due to us having a greater opinion of ourselves then we should. Sure we need some self-esteem, but our esteem should be in Christ. We are his servants, he is our master. Yet he also calls us his friend. We live for Christ because he died for us. Hagar was wrong, and God corrected her but also blessed her. We should not be wrong in our attitude toward others, which is for certain. But also we know God is blessing us each and every day. Let us live as he desires us to, not by our own emotions, but by his Spirit. When we are in the wrong, surely God will correct us, but he also has blessed us.