El Roi: The God Who Sees Me| Hagar and Her Son

Описание: The Woman God Saw in the Wilderness

Hagar is one of the most powerful and tender figures in the Bible—yet also one of the most overlooked. Her story is found primarily in Genesis 16 and Genesis 21, and it reveals a God who sees, hears, and rescues people whom the world forgets.

Hagar was an Egyptian servant woman in the household of Abram and Sarai. She was not free. She had no power over her own life or body. She lived under authority that made decisions for her—decisions that changed her destiny forever.

When Sarai grew weary of waiting for God’s promise of a child, she gave Hagar to Abram as a wife in a desperate attempt to force the future. Hagar did not volunteer for this role. She was used as a solution to someone else’s disappointment.

And when she became pregnant, instead of being protected, she became targeted.

Sarai’s pain turned into cruelty. Abram’s silence became abandonment. And Hagar—young, vulnerable, and pregnant—became the one who carried the weight of everyone’s mistakes.

So she ran.

🌵 Hagar in the Wilderness – The First Escape

Hagar fled into the desert with nothing but fear and confusion. She did not run toward freedom—she ran from suffering. And in that wilderness, something remarkable happened.

God found her.

Not as a servant.
Not as property.
Not as a mistake.

But as a person with a name.

The Angel of the Lord called her “Hagar.”
This is the first time in Scripture that God addresses a woman personally by name in such a direct way.

In that sacred moment, Hagar experienced something she had never known before—to be seen.

God did not erase her pain. He did not deny her suffering. Instead, He named it:

“The Lord has heard your affliction.”

He promised her a future.
He named her child Ishmael—which means “God hears.”

And then Hagar did something no one else in the Bible had done before her.

She named God.

She called Him:

El Roi — “The God Who Sees Me.”

Hagar became the first person in Scripture to give God a name based on personal experience.
Not theology.
Not tradition.
But encounter.