At the End of the World is a Well

Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. – Genesis 21:19

The idea that what we as humans can know is all that exists is hardly worth dismissing.  The most materialistic of materialists might wax eloquent on the existence of the vast quantum world which we can experience only indirectly and speak of sensibly only through intricate mathematics.  We have been able to create new instruments and tools that extend  our human senses and inform us that the natural eye sees only a narrow range of the spectrum and that the natural ear responds to only a segment of the sound waves striking it continually. 

The verse above is taken from the story of Hagar and Ishmael.  After the birth of the promised heir, Isaac, his mother, Sarah, insisted that her servant Hagar and her son Ishmael, fathered by Abraham, be sent away.  Sarah perceived Ishmael as a threat to Isaac and potentially a negative influence upon his development.  Putting aside that it was Sarah’s idea to have a “proxy” son by her servant, she was probably right in demanding a separation.  We see later in Genesis how the jealousy of an older sibling toward a favored younger brother created difficulties on a couple of occasions. 

Driven into the wilderness with only a skin of water and some bread, Hagar and her fourteen-year-old son wander rather hopelessness without apparent direction until the water is gone.  Did she intend to try to return to her people in Egypt?  Did she have a destination in mind and lose her way?  Or was she so distraught by the uprooting of her life and her loss of purpose and status that she simply gave up?

 There were established settlements in that region.  There were trade and travel routes that could be followed where water could be obtained at regular intervals.  Hagar apparently sought out none of those roads.  Abraham did not provision Hagar and Ishmael in the way that he did with the intent that they would simply go away and die somewhere out of sight.  He loved Ishmael and had received a promise from the Lord on the boy’s behalf.  Being a wealthy and generous person, we can be assured that he gave the exiles enough to allow them to reach some other camp.  Perhaps he even directed them to the encampment of one of his friends or allies.  It was Hagar who squandered their resources. 

Her life was settled, so she thought.  Hagar was more than a servant in Abraham’s entourage, she was the birth-mother of the patriarch’s son.  I have no doubt that Hagar loved her son, but she also viewed him as her prize, the thing that distinguished her from everybody else.  It was Ishmael’s relationship to Abraham that heightened Hagar’s self-image and made her feel slightly elevated above the other servants.  She had pride and position.  When her status was lost, Hagar decided that her life was over.  She gave up and walked aimlessly into a deserted area until she and her son reached a point where they were about to die of thirst.  Unwilling to watch the death of her son, she left him in the shade of a bush and moved away.  Ishmael means “God hears”.  As the boy began to cry in need, the Lord heard him.  God roused Hagar and spoke to her, opening her eyes to the boy’s future.  It was not to end in agony as a pitiful feast for scavengers.  This child, too, was Abraham’s seed.  Despite not being the chosen line for the Seed of Abraham, Ishmael would still found a great nation, and, ultimately, a great adversary for the Chosen. 

We can take a spiritual lesson from Hagar’s trouble.  We can see that our lives have lost purpose and direction, and we have wandered until death was upon us.  We gave up, but something in us cried out to God, and He opened our eyes.  We saw our Well of Living Water, finding Christ and a renewed destiny. 

But we lose something if we “over spiritualize” the reality.  Was there a well there?  Yes.  Was there a well there before Hagar saw it?  We don’t know.  Perhaps in her extremity, Hagar missed seeing something that was plainly before her.  She would hardly be the first or the last.  The most reasonable explanation would be that Hagar knew there was a well in the area and was looking for it but had been unable to locate it.  After sitting in the shade for a bit and recovering, she was able to process the visual information correctly and figure out where she was. 

Reasonable, though, is not always true.  There is a reality that underlies what we normally see and experience.  When that reality breaks through, we are apt to call the event a miracle.  That which we need is ever before us.  We long for what is at hand, unless we have allowed our minds to be so perverted and twisted by lies that repentance has become for us impossible.  Hagar could have rejected the voice of God, denied it and died, but she was not far gone in self-absorption. 

I really do not think God minds all that much if we struggle to find a more “reasonable” explanation, if, in the end, we rise, go to the Well, and drink.  Reality can be pretty disturbing to humans who have grown so accustomed to this derived manifestation, which is, after all, God’s creation.  He is satisfied if, when we are in need, we remember, He hears. 

Mystics of many countries and many centuries have spoken of this memory; and the honest men and charlatans, who keep the magical traditions which will some day be studied as a part of folk-lore, base most that is of importance in their claims upon this memory. …  It is perhaps well that so few believe in it, for if many did many would go out of parliaments and universities and libraries and run into the wilderness to so waste the body, and to so hush the unquiet mind that, still living, they might pass the doors the dead pass daily; for who among the wise would trouble himself with making laws or in writing history or in weighing the earth if the things of eternity seemed ready to hand? 

        -  W. B. Yeats from “Magic” in Ideas of Good and Evil.