We meet Hagar in the Lectionary Today (track 1), and in case we don't know her well, The Rev. L.H. Freeman introduces us to this very important lady on her blog here -> https://bit.ly/LHFonHagar and HIGHlights below:
Hagar may have been a slave and nemesis to Sarah, but she is a mother to Ishmael; she is the first person recorded in the Bible crying; she is Islam’s spiritual foremother, and she is also the first person in the Bible to name God - she called God El-Roi, אל ראי, “O God of seeing" (sometimes "The God who Sees Me"). She is only one of three women with whom God dialogues.
You'll remember there are tensions between Sarah and Hagar as Ishmael grows older, and Sarah has Abraham banish them in to the desert (with God's approval). It is in the desert where Hagar weeps, fearful for the well-being of her son, and
"...God acts, hearing the voice of the boy. 'Come, lift up your boy,' says God, 'and I will make of him a great nation.' Thus was born a key building block of Islam, with God having heard a woman in distress and saving her child. (...it was not until the eighth century, through the efforts of the prophet Mohammed, that the Abraham-Hagar union became more influential.)
The dialogue between Hagar and God is a story of relationship and action. God finds Hagar when Sarah has banished her; Hagar does what God tells her to do; Hagar recognizes that she is in the presence of the divine and names God, and, God who protects both mother and son."
p.s.: I KNOW you have a copy of the mighty work Rev. Freeman compiled, BIBLE WOMEN: ALL THEIR WORDS AND WHY THEY MATTER, documenting every word spoken in the Bible by women, right? xoxo
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