How come?

How can someone who has seen the God who sees her (He sees you...), and has heard the God who hears her (He hears you...), turn and go back to a life of bondage?

That's what happened to a woman named Hagar, Sarah's servant, way back in the Bible.

Why wasn't she redeemed and transformed? Why was her son destined to become "a donkey of a man"? Why was she forever regarded as the "slave woman," while Sarah (though, herself, thoughtless and mean) was a "free woman"? (Gal. 4:22)

Hagar's son was born according to the flesh. Sarah's son was born through the promise (according to the Spirit). It's a lesson to us: That which comes from the flesh is destined to fail. To experience hardship. To find angst in the world. When we let the Spirit rule, there is hope. A future. A promise of peace... somewhere down the line.

When all is said and done, the Lord has granted us "free will," and Hagar exercised the will to go back to what was familiar to her. What was comfortable to her. She went back to Egypt, and all that went with it. When she left Sarah for the last time, she also left the God of heaven and earth.

It would seem that she let Sarah and Abraham dictate the character of God, as she would understand it.  Their living example wasn't enough to sustain her faith in the One True and Living God. The awful taste in her mouth, from two of God's finest examples of grace, overpowered her own personal experience of His presence.

We're human, aren't we? Prone to fail. Prone to let people down. That's why God's grace is so precious to those of us who have been saved. We know the ugly truth. We also know the One who knows us - sees us - hears us. It seems like a crazy triangular irony. We get saved, we share God's love, we screw up.

Is God strong enough to save those who are perishing? I believe His is. In spite of my feeble efforts.

Lord, bring freedom. Bring truth. Bring life. I praise You. Amen.

"For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery." Galatians 5:1