A Well She Couldn't See
Have you ever been sure there was nothing left, only to find out later that what you needed was close by all along? What might be near you right now that you haven't been able to see?
“God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. She went, filled the bottle with water, and gave the boy drink.”Genesis 21:19
Hagar and her son Ishmael have been sent away from Abraham's household with some bread and a skin of water. They wander in the wilderness of Beersheba, the dry country of the Negev in the south of the land, where a skin of water is the difference between living and dying. When the water runs out, Hagar sets the boy under one of the desert shrubs and sits down about a bowshot away, because she cannot bear to watch him die. Then the story turns. God hears the boy's voice, the angel of God calls to Hagar from heaven, and then comes our verse: "God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water." Notice what the text does and doesn't say. It never tells us God dug a well on the spot. It says she saw it. In that country a well was everything: life, a gathering place, a landmark. Abraham would soon dig and swear an oath over a well at this same Beersheba (Genesis 21:25-31). For Hagar, the well may have been there all along. What she needed was eyes to see it.
This isn't Hagar's first meeting with God in the wilderness. Years earlier, running from Sarah, she was found beside a spring, and she gave God a name no one else in Scripture gives him: El Roi, "a God who sees" (Genesis 16:13). Now the God who sees helps her see. She stands outside the covenant line that runs through Isaac, yet God hears her son, makes promises over him, and meets her in the dust. Israel would later treasure the Hebrew word hesed, God's loyal, steadfast kindness, and God would name himself by it at Sinai (Exodus 34:6). Beside this desert well we catch an early glimpse of that same heart, reaching a mother who thought no one was watching.
We live surrounded by more help than we notice, and still most of us know Hagar's posture. We sit a bowshot away from the thing we're afraid to watch: a marriage, a child's choices, a diagnosis, a faith that feels dry. Our culture tells us that if we can't see a solution, there isn't one, and that whatever we get, we'll have to dig ourselves. This story doesn't promise that every empty water skin gets refilled the way we'd choose. It does press a quieter question on us. What if God's kindness is already closer than our grief allows us to see? What if the first gift is not a new well, but opened eyes? Hagar's wilderness didn't change that afternoon. Her sight did, and so did her knowledge of who was watching over her.
Where in your life right now do you feel like you're sitting a bowshot away, unable to look? Write about what it might mean that God is "a God who sees," even there, and ask him what you might not yet be seeing.
God who sees, you found Hagar in the wilderness, and you have not lost track of me. When my water runs out and I can't bear to look, hear me as you heard that boy under the shrub. Open my eyes to the kindness you have already set near me. Teach me to trust your steadfast love even before I can see the well. Amen.