Free Wounded by God's People by Anne Graham Lotz

your hand will guide me,
    your right hand will hold me fast. 8
    Wherever you are, whoever you are, David’s God — the God of Hagar — is right there. If you can still the racing beat of your heart, quiet your frantic thoughts, silence those imaginary conversations, listen carefully with the ears of your spirit, then you will begin to hear His voice. I think I can hear Him now, calling you by name …

SIX
Spiritual Blind Spots
You Are Missing the Obvious
    And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?”
    â€œI’m running away from my mistress Sarai,” she answered
.
    Then the angel of the L ORD told her, “Go back to your mistress and submit to her.” The angel added, “I will so increase your descendants that they will be too numerous to count …”
    She gave this name to the L ORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” That is why the well was called Beer Lahai Roi; it is still there, between Kadesh and Bered
.
    So Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram gave the name Ishmael to the son she had borne. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael
.
    Genesis 16:8–10, 13–16
    Â 
    B oth of my parents have suffered from macular degeneration, a disease that blurs vision by causing a blind spot. My mother used to look at me with her characteristic twinkle and exclaim, “Anne, I can’t see your face. All I can see is a blank spot framed with hair.” In the end, she couldn’t even see my hair! And in spite of the latest medical treatments, including frequent injections directly into his eye, my father has lost the ability to focus. He can no longer read his Bible or the daily newspapers that still come to the house. His wonderful staff has improvised so that they pull up a large flat-screen television within three feet of where he is sitting, but he still has difficulty seeing the picture. One of my joys when I visit is to watch TV with him, explaining what I see. Or to read the newspaper headlines to him, commenting on what I read and asking him what he thinks. I can’t imagine how hard it is for my father, whose mind is still alert and active, to have blind spots that hinder him from seeing clearly.
    Having witnessed the effects of this disease up close, I see it as the perfect metaphor for Hagar’s spiritual condition when she fled from Abraham and Sarah. She suffered from a significant blind spot of her own, a kind of spiritual macular degeneration. There were some things she just could not see clearly. So the Angel of the Lord gently questioned her. Not for information, since He already knew what had happened. He questioned Hagar for her own benefit, to help her focus. He wanted Hagar to talk things through with Him because she may have thought that she was just a victim, not responsible for whathad happened. That the mess she was in was someone else’s fault. She may have been bitterly focused on
them —
God’s people who had wronged her — while remaining blind to her own failures.
    The Angel of the Lord gently probed her blindness: “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from, and where are you going?” 1 Reading between the lines, I can imagine a whole host of additional questions:
Hagar, will you talk with Me for a moment about what you’re doing and where you belong? You are Sarah’s servant; don’t you think you belong with her? Are you sure this is what you want to do with your life and where you want to go? Is this really wise? Will this course of action make you happy? Hagar, I know you’ve been deeply hurt by people who call themselves by My name. You’re rejecting them. Are you also rejecting Me? Let’s think this through carefully. Together
.
    When wounded, you and I also need to think things through very carefully. Could the wounding