The remarkable Old Testament story of Sarah’s servant Hagar is one worth revisiting. Difficulties in the home prompted Abraham, Sarah’s husband, to send Hagar and her son away into the wilderness with only a bottle of water and some bread. It’s not hard to imagine that Hagar must have felt abandoned and concerned about how to feed her child (see Genesis 21:9–21).
When the bottle of water was empty, she moved away from her son, because she did not want to see him die. But even in the midst of that absolute despair, this mother came to understand that the boy had a direct relationship to God. An angel—a divine message—told her, “God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is.” Hagar and the child were then saved. The Bible reports, “And God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water; and she went, and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink.”
The angel message had ordered Hagar to “lift up” the boy. Seen through Christian Science, the angel message was telling Hagar to lift up her thought of the boy and to behold the source of his life: God, divine Life, the only Life. She had to see that his life could not be lost. The most remarkable thing to me about this story is that the much-needed water was already there. Hagar’s despair had prevented her from seeing that the solution had always been within her reach. A lesson for us today is that God’s answer is always near.
