Daily Devotion, January 7, 2021

 

Devotion:

Read Genesis 21:14-19.

Once Sarah gives birth to Isaac she wants Hagar and Ishmael permanently banished. Hagar and her son Ishmael are forced into the wilderness with only some bread and water, which is almost a death sentence. When the water runs out, Hagar places her son in the shade of a bush and goes off because she can’t bear the sound of his crying and the thought of her child dying. She begins to weep. Franklin Roosevelt said, “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” Hagar is near the end of her rope when, in what she believed were the last moments of her life, she lifted up her voice and called to God for help. God heard her, and heard the weak voice of her dying son. Then her eyes were opened, and she saw something she had missed before: a well of fresh water. She refilled the skin that Abraham had given her. They lived in the wilderness of Paran, where Ishmael grew to manhood.

There are a lot of lessons we can learn from Hagar’s experience. She was resilient and brave and she was a survivor. In the most difficult moments of her life, God showed up to give her comfort and hope. She was obedient to what God told her to do. Sometimes when we’re really hurting we can miss the resources and the help that God may have placed within our view or grasp, but with the Lord’s help we may discover there are wells of water available to us. All this happened with Hagar and it can happen for us too. Like Hagar, we may cry out to God in our time of deepest need and the Lord may speak to us and show us there is a way when there seems to be no way. When we’ve tied a knot in the end of our rope and are hanging on, that’s when God may show up.

Personal Worship:

Let’s pray: God, thank you for seeing us and hearing us in our times of need, especially when we’ve been mistreated or we find ourselves in the desert and feeling we can’t go on. We pray that you give us the faith, strength, and courage we need to go forward in life with renewed hope, deeper faith, and stronger love. We ask this in Jesus’ name, Amen.