Hagar's Well

The Bible tells the story of Hagar, Abram's servant who bore him his first son - Ishmael. If you remember the story, you know that God promised Abram that he would become a father, but the promise was taking a little bit too long for Abram's human tastes, so his wife, Sarai, came up with this humanly-brilliant plan where he sleeps with her servant, Hagar, and they make that kid the kid. Certainly, that's what God had in mind, right?

So Abram sleeps with Hagar, she becomes pregnant, she has a child, they name him Ishmael, and the relational tension between Hagar and Sarai becomes so extreme that Hagar runs away. In the wilderness, God comes to speak to her (Genesis 16), and in the process of His command, there is provision in the form of a well - a source of fresh water for a parched soul on the run. 

She names the well Beer-Lahai-Roi - the well of the God who sees me. 

This is where it becomes important to pay attention to the names and places in the Bible. It's so easy, especially in the Old Testament, to read right past these things. So many names, so many places, so little memory. But this is a well that will come back later...and not too much later. 

Hagar has Ishmael, then Sarah has Isaac. (By this time, God has changed Abram and Sarai's names to Abraham and Sarah.) Isaac is the promised child. He is the one through whom God will fulfill all of the things He's said to Abraham over the course of a faithful lifetime. He is the first of the stars in the sky and the sands on the shore. Isaac is the kid. 

Sarah, always jealous, sends Hagar and Ishmael away, and they go on to create a nation of their own, which is always at odds with Isaac's nation, but has a measure of the favor of God nonetheless. Ishmael is, after all, Abraham's son, too. 

It's hard to know for sure how much of Ishmael's story Isaac knew. Ishmael was considerably older than Isaac. The dynamics between Sarah and Hagar were rough, at best (and actually, far worse than that). How much contact the cousins had is hard to know. How much Isaac knew about Hagar's wanderings, we don't know. How often they came in contact over the course of his growing up, or even his life, is a mystery to us. The Bible doesn't tell us. We would probably be safe in saying that he knew some things, but maybe not everything. 

Still, something interesting happens. 

Isaac lives his life, grows up in the Lord, walks with Abraham and learns the way of righteousness. He gets a wife, Rebekah, from his own family, marries her, and grows up to have his own kids. And, as always happens, his father, Abraham, dies. And, as was often the case in the nomadic culture of the Old Testament, after Abraham dies, Isaac picks up and keeps moving. 

And the first place the Bible tells us he settles is...

Beer-Lahai-Roi. 

James

His name was James, and I liked him immediately. 

He was the line cook at a facility that I spent some time in as a kid, a good-natured man with maybe the most genuine smile and easy-goingness I had ever met in my whole life. And he took a liking to me, too. 

Every day, I would go through the line with my tray, and we'd spend the whole time talking and chatting about the most random things. Mostly sports. We were both really into basketball. It wasn't long before he invited me to come down to the gym after lunch and shoot some baskets with him. 

I wasn't sure how the rules of the facility worked. I was new there when I first met James. It was a locked joint - it wasn't exactly the kind of place where one could freely move about. But I asked the staff if I could go down to the gym, that James had invited me, and they smiled and buzzed me out the door. 

I walked down the hall, this great big ramp, by myself and turned into the gym, where James had ditched his hair net and was dribbling a ball around and taking a few warm-up shots. He immediately passed it to me. 

And this became our routine. 

Every day, after lunch, the staff would buzz me out the door and I would walk down the hall to the gym, where James would be warming up. He'd greet me with that authentic smile, pass me the ball, and we'd start shooting around and talking about life. Unlike so many other persons in my life, there was no teasing. Not even sportsman-ish teasing. There was no trash talk. Just solid, pure, 100% encouragement and relationship.  

I treasured those hours with James. 

It didn't occur to me until much, much later in life - actually, until I started working a job with kids myself - the sacrifices James must have made for those hours. There were things to do in the kitchen - leftovers to clean up, dishes to wash, steamers to drain, stock to rotate, stuff to pull for the next meal. He had plenty to keep him busy. 

But he always made time for me anyway. 

I think about those afternoons quite a bit when I have to choose between a task and a person in front of me. Tasks...can wait. And I'm willing to work a little bit harder at my job, at the things that I do, if it means that I don't miss this moment for authentic connection and real relationship with an actual human being right in front of me. You never really know how much those little things mean to the persons on the receiving end of them. 

And if that means that I go back and spend a little more time on the tasks later, then so be it. There will always be dishes to wash. 

You'll never get that basketball court back. 

God Guards You

There have been times in my life when I could have used a protector - someone to stand between me and the bad things, or wicked persons, in this world and create a bit of a shield. Times when I have needed someone bigger than me, stronger than me, wiser than me, more patient than me. 

There have been times when I have needed someone to protect me from myself (which, by the way, is no easy task). 

And there have been times in my life when I have been able to look back and see that Someone was indeed doing this all along. 

It's hard to prove things in the negative. That is, it's extremely difficult to say that something didn't happen that was obviously going to because you can never really prove that it would have happened if that specific intervention didn't take place. One of the most powerful recent examples of this is when they started coming out with all of these estimates of how many persons would have died from Covid without the vaccination. They kept claiming how many lives were saved, how many deaths prevented, by the vaccine, but the truth is, you can't know who would have died and who wouldn't have. They still don't know why some got so sick and others didn't and some died and some didn't. Scientifically, it's just impossible to quantify something that never happened. 

But I can tell you, looking back on my life, that there are a lot of different roads I could be down right now, were it not for some kind of intervention I didn't even recognize at the time but see so beautifully in hindsight. 

And every single one of those instances is the very hand of God. For as the psalms say, the Lord guards you (121:5).

The Lord stands as your protector - getting between you and the bad things, or the wicked persons, of this world. The Lord stands as your shield. The Lord blocks off a path that's not any good for you and forces you down a better way.

The Lord protects you from yourself. Usually through things like humility and confession and grace.

He's willing to stand in the hard places and face the tough things because He's bigger than you, stronger than you, wiser than you, more patient than you. God is uniquely qualified to guard you, to wrap you in His loving arms and create a bit of a shield. A hedge of protection, if we want to use a more spiritual term. 

And He's guarding you right now. Look at what the psalm says - He guards you. Not He has guarded you or He will guard you, but He guards you. Right now. With every breath. In every day. 

Are you at a time in your life when you could use a protector? 

Rest easy, friend. You have one. 

God of Good Things

The Bible tells us to let our yes be yes and our no be no; it's as simple as that. And the reason that it is so simple is because God Himself is the Word and His yes is simply a yes and His no is simply a no, so if we're aspiring to be like our Lord (in whose image we are created), then we have to speak words with the same promise. 

And promise, they have. 

Every single Word that God has spoken has come true. What's even more important than that is that every single Word that God has spoken is good. 

God has done every good thing He has promised. (Psalm 119:65)

When I look back over my life, it's not entirely good. At least, it doesn't look that way on the surface. I've had some struggles. I've had some fights. I've made some mistakes. I...keep making mistakes. I've said some things that I regret, made some promises I haven't kept, acted in ways that were, fundamentally, not good. 

And yet, at the same time, when I look back over my life, I recognize that every good word God has spoken in my life has come to fulfillment. Or it is coming to fulfillment. Or, even if I can't see it coming to fulfillment yet, I believe it in such a way in my soul that I know that it is...whether it makes worldly sense or not. 

I look at my life and, as I said the other day, recognize that God loves me. That He is good to me. And that He really has done every good thing He promised, big and small. 

I think that's what trips us up. We talk about the promises of God, and we end up talking about the big promises of God: His Son, the Cross, the Empty Tomb, the mansion He's building us, the restoration of all things, redemption. And we sort of kind of blow past these promises because some of them are fulfilled (Christ is risen) and some, we're still waiting on, and we do this cute little poetic thing where we call it "the-already-but-not-yet" that we're living in, but God's promises are greater than the big things. 

God's promises are the little things, too. 

The little things like never leaving nor forsaking you. The little things like holding you in His hand. The little things like clothing you better than the birds of the air or the flowers of the field. The little things like making you beautiful, confident, hopeful, strong, loving. 

The little things like making you you and loving you so, so deeply. 

When you think about the promises of God in your life and the good things He's done, what do you think about? 

In what little ways has He been good to you? 

Do you know that His yes is a yes? 

God is Love

I have lived quite a life. Sometimes, I'll be telling a story from something I have experienced, and it will roll into another story, which will roll into another one, and I'll look up to see someone gape-mouthed in front of me, one eyebrow sort of cocked up, and I'll laugh and say, "Didn't you know? God loves me special much." 

I haven't thought about these experiences in quite so positive a light while I've been living most of them, but as the acute phases wear off and things start to settle into a bigger perspective, I look at my life, and I see the fingerprints of divine love all over it. 

Truth be told, the experiences I've had, the strength I now stand in, the character of my spirit, all the things that make me who I am, not a one of them is possible unless God loves me. 

The same is true for you. 

Nothing in your life is possible unless it is God who is loving you. Through the hard times and the easy ones, the good and the bad, the trials and the triumphs, all of it, God has been busy loving you. 

And Psalms confirms that I am right - He loves us (me, you) very much. Special much. (Psalm 117:2)

Sometimes, it's hard to see that in the moment. It's hard to look past the circumstances and see what's going on. It's all we can do to keep our eyes open to see the trees, let alone look for the forest. It's hard, in the dust and the ashes, to remember that God is loving us. 

But He is. 

I wish we could see it from His end, so we could always know, but the only option we have is to see it from our side. From our already-but-not-yet, waiting-and-hoping-and-trusting, longing side where the love isn't always obvious, but if we can slow down, quiet our souls a little, get away from the noise and the mess, we can feel it. Undeniably. We know it in the pits of our souls. 

God loves us special much. 

He always has. He always will. 

He always is.