The God who hears. The God who sees.

Here in this passage, we see two names that describe God.

Ishmael: God hears.

El-roi: God sees me.

That’s who God was to Hagar.

And it wasn’t like she deserved it. She messed up badly, and so she was forced to run away.

But God heard her.

God saw her.

And he went chasing after her in the desert.

That term “angel of the Lord” is very interesting.

Sometimes it refers to a mere angel.

But the word “angel” itself means “messenger.”

And sometimes it seems that messenger spoke as if he were God himself.

He does so here:

The angel of the Lord said to her, “I will greatly multiply your offspring, and they will be too many to count.” (10)

Some Bible scholars think this messenger may have been Jesus himself, hundreds of years before he appeared on earth as a baby.

And to Hagar too, Jesus was Immanuel: “God with us.”

The God who sees. The God who hears.

Like Hagar, you might be in a spiritual desert right now. Like Hagar, it might be your own fault.

But God is not giving up on you. He’s chasing after you.

He sees.

He hears.

He is and will always be…Immanuel.