THE Bible story of Hagar and her little son Ishmael is probably the first record of displaced persons. This mother and her son, who were cast out, evicted from their home, and sent into the lonely and desolate wilderness of Beer-sheba, wandered there until their supply of water gave out. Then Hagar, weary, homesick, and afraid, laid the child in the shade under some bushes, while she went away, "a good way off," so that she might not witness his suffering. "Let me not see the death of the child," she said to herself. And bitterly and hopelessly she wept.
Yet God was right there! Supply was right there ! And the angel of God spoke to her and said (Gen. 21:17,18): "What aileth thee, Hagar? fear not. . . . Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him in thine hand." And God opened her eyes, so that she saw a well of water close by, from which she filled her bottle and gave the boy a drink. God was indeed with her and with the lad.
So blinded had Hagar been with weeping and fear that she could not see the well of water, which was there all the time. How like Hagar we are at times! How real suffering and trouble seem to us! How completely we accept them and identify ourselves with them ! How blinded we are to the well of water, the inexhaustible supply of good, which is always at hand because God is always at hand ! When, however, like Hagar, we lift our thought above the material evidence of pain and lack to the spiritual evidence of God's everpresence and love, we too shall experience healing and find supply.
