Hot Sand, No Water Just Grace

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. But she had an Egyptian maidservant named Hagar; 2 so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her."

Abram agreed to what Sarai said. 3 So after Abram had been living in Canaan ten years, Sarai his wife took her Egyptian maidservant Hagar and gave her to her husband to be his wife. 4 He slept with Hagar, and she conceived.

When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. 5 Then Sarai said to Abram, "You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me."

6 "Your servant is in your hands," Abram said. "Do with her whatever you think best." Then Sarai mistreated Hagar; so she fled from her.

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."

11 The angel of the LORD also said to her:

"You are now with child

and you will have a son.

You shall name him Ishmael,

for the LORD has heard of your misery.

8 The child grew and was weaned, and on the day Isaac was weaned Abraham held a great feast. 9 But Sarah saw that the son whom Hagar the Egyptian had borne to Abraham was mocking, 10 and she said to Abraham, "Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac."

11 The matter distressed Abraham greatly because it concerned his son. 12 But God said to him, "Do not be so distressed about the boy and your maidservant. Listen to whatever Sarah tells you, because it is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned. 13 I will make the son of the maidservant into a nation also, because he is your offspring."

14 Early the next morning Abraham took some food and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar. He set them on her shoulders and then sent her off with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba.

15 When the water in the skin was gone, she put the boy under one of the bushes. 16 Then she went off and sat down nearby, about a bowshot away, for she thought, "I cannot watch the boy die." And as she sat there nearby, she began to sob.

17 God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. 18 Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation."

19 Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.

Go with me this morning to the hot desert. As far as the eye can see to the north, south, east or west all that is visible is sand, sand, and then more sand!

The sun is beaming it’s brilliant rays earthward and the reflection of the brightness has elevated the surface temperature to a degree far to hot for the sole of a human foot. Now almost as if arrows of fire are coming from the sky, your eyes squinted as they must still frantically search to and fro…somewhere you think, surely somewhere there must be some relief.

Occasionally the wind will blow just enough to cause a swirling effect on the sea of those endless grains of sand, and the more you look the larger the vastness of the area appears.

You again stop and listen, almost being consumed by the vastness of a deep and profound silence.

Your alone, civilization seems so abandoned, there’s no one, no wildlife, no life period, just you and sand, hot sand…and an occasional burnt bush dwarfed and scraggly from the abuse of the heat and wind.

THEN, suddenly almost out of nowhere the silence is broken. At first it is almost hard to recognize, almost as if a moan, you pause…was it just your imagination, and then you hear it again followed by the sound of a person crying, well more like weeping.