The Offense of Joy, Hagar's Story- Genesis 16, 21

 Joy is an offensive signpost- it reads like this:

“You cannot go back to what you have been, but neither can you go forward into what you had resigned yourself to. When you laugh, slavery no longer serves you.”

Joy bides its time patiently until the opportune moment to rush in and intrude on emotional certainty. It has a plan to steal the things you carry around for your protection, like regret, bitterness or apathy.

And the invitation is to return to the refinement and wait for joy to grow offensive to your pain.

Then we can follow this inappropriate joy into the wilderness, removed and cut off from slavery. It’s a rude interruption of the negative tapes that play over and over in your head. 

The invitation is dangerous, because it is threatens your current way of thinking and upends the resignation you had planned.

And in every single moment of joy, everything has the potential to transform. Joy is a game changer, a plot twister, a single instant that can alter the entire course of your journey.

But only if you choose to trust its timing and surrender your desperate hold on the things which hold you captive.

My prayer is that we would laugh in the midst of refinement and then allow that inappropriate joy to lead us out into a life of freedom in the wilderness.

Joy will steal your security and leave you vulnerable and exposed.

It especially likes to interrupt suddenly and confiscate pain and suffering.

Joy will do strange things like swirl around your face and kiss your forehead while you are sitting quietly on your yoga mat, deep in meditation, trying to find God.

You will know it’s joy when it enters in at a moment when you were least expecting it to be there. Joy is persistent- it is not invited to the door, it will knock anyways. But to have a lasting effect it does need to be welcomed in.

And in some ways it’s a terrible house guest, because it steals things.

Joy takes definite security without asking and leaves us vulnerable.

Joy exposes our wounded places- it shows us where we still need to be loved.

It strips away slavery, resignation, pretenses.

It makes us vulnerable. It requires submission to be felt.

I find myself this week studying Genesis chapter 16 and 21, the story of a terrible conflict between father Abraham’s first wife, Sarah, and his second “wife”, Hagar.

I liked Hagar the very first time I met her, because she has an unkempt and complicated story without any straight lines. She is the mother of Ishmael, wife of the patriarch of the Islamic peoples, matriarch of monotheism, with a lineage that is worthy of many wars.

Many people are frightened or threatened by what Hagar’s journey gives birth to. Others revere her legacy with honor. In its entirety her story is MESSY, with some majorly conflicting points of view. And in the midst of “it’s complicated”, God gives her a voice and a place of dignity in the Christian Scriptures.

This is why I am like her.

Her legacy makes people uncomfortable, even thousands of years later.

And she is loved and blessed by God, with an honorable role to play in Scripture.

Hagar is an Egyptian slave, given to her master by his wife to bear them a child. This was not her choice- it was circumstantial. Which is true of most of our lifelong sufferings- they begin from things that were out of our control- like slavery.

And as the story unfolds, Hagar is the victim of other people’s insecurities and fears-

“Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had not been able to bear children for him. But she had an Egyptian servant named Hagar. So she took Hagar the Egyptian servant and gave her to Abram as a wife.” 16:1,3

We do not ask for conflicting things to happen, but they do and it defines the course of our entire lives and we cannot stop the outcome. And putting up walls of anger or hate becomes one of the safest forms of self-defense-

“When Hagar knew she was pregnant, she began to treat her mistress, Sarai, with contempt.” 16:4

The natural response to suffering is to blame others, because this helps us avoid the places inside us that are wounded and hurting. It is easier to hurt others than to heal ourselves.

“Then Sara said to Abraham, ‘This is all your fault! I put my servant into your arms, but now that she’s pregnant she treats me with contempt. The Lord will show who’s wrong- you or me!” 16:5

Becoming defensive is a sign of fear- perhaps fear that our weakness might be showing. Our reactions to painful circumstances help solidify the negative cycle, setting the course for more suffering and manifesting our worst fears. We literally draw more pain into ourselves by trying to avoid it.  

Abraham gave up defending Hagar. The relational conflict was too complicated for human hands to untangle. It had grown beyond his sense of control.

“Abram replied, 'Look, she is your servant, so deal with her as you see fit.' Then Sarai treated Hagar so harshly that she finally ran away.” 16:6

We will eventually reach a point where we cannot bear the burden of hidden suffering any longer, and after years and years of covering up the hurt, the relational conflict becomes so heavy that we want to escape.

“she finally ran away.”

 And this is where joy waits to meet us in the wilderness.

God meets Hagar in the desert and speaks to her through an angel:

“Hagar, Sarai’s servant, where have you come from, and where are you going?” 16:8

Joy draws near and asks us what our plan is. And there is no plan, other than to keep running.

“I’m running away from my mistress, Sarai.” Hagar replied. 16:8

Joy stops us mid-flight. It wants us to learn to thrive right in the midst of our pain, to turn and face it, because we cannot run forever.

Nobody can outrun relational offense and still manage to heal well and properly. Reconciliation is not possible if you are running away- even the prodigal son had to retrace his steps and walk back before he could be blessed.

The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her authority.” 16:9

If you forego the exposure to maturity, you forego the healing and the joy that comes with it. The reward is in the returning, in the dwelling.

Oh dear God, we think, do you want us to remain in the tension and live our whole life there, right in the hardest place? How can You ask such a thing of your child? That’s an offensive ask!

Anger lurks in our response, ready to defend itself at all costs. But God brings us joy to help us understand.

He promises to honor us in due time.

“I will give you more descendants than you can count. You will give birth to a son. You are to name him Ishmael (which means ‘God hears’), for the Lord has heard your cry of distress.” 16:11

Sometimes joy is a promise we wait for, doing the long, hard work of refinement in our souls. It is not the time to escape into the wilderness…not yet, beloved.

So Hagar returns to slavery.

But before she goes, she gives her God a new name, one that suits her new view of suffering- trust and awe, gratitude and doubt and worry, all gathered up into the same breath.

“Thereafter Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, ‘You are the God who sees me. She also said, “Have I truly seen the One who sees me?”16:13

The realization is that she is seen.

Because her pain and suffering have been seen and acknowledged and honored. She knows that when she walks back into the hard place, it will be with blessing and honor.

She will stand in the hard place and let herself be seen.

Joy is asking us to journey back into the refinement process, for God is one who sees and waits to bless us right there in the trial, through it and because of it, redeeming every tear.

The story is just beginning, and here is not the chapter about the wilderness. This is the chapter about waiting for deliverance, dwelling in the circumstances while praying to be sent out from them, learning to discover joy while waiting for it to set you free.

 “So Hagar gave Abraham a son, and he named him Ishmael.” 16:15

Hagar remained in her painful circumstance, one which she did not choose but chose her.

Hers was a brokenness that would take years or even a lifetime to repair, a relational conflict which required humility and forgiveness beyond human understanding.

And the curtain closes after Ishmael is born, and then we do not see Hagar for 14 years- she returns to slavery, disappears into the community and her story goes underground.

This is the refinement period. It happens alone, quietly, unobserved and hidden from curious eyes. An intimate knowing between only herself and God.

What will be left when we see her again after all that time?

So much exposure to the people who cause her pain, you would think we would find a woman broken, angry, hateful, bitter. All that time she remains a slave, with a story defined by regret, victim of circumstances she did not ask for, an embarrassment to her superiors, with no safe place to belong and a story nobody wants to share.

The potential for bitterness is exponential. She should be broken and full of contempt when we see her again.

Yet the next time we see Hagar, she is laughing.

Laughing?

At this point Abraham and Sarah have had a baby of their own, who is only just a toddler. And it is readily apparent that Sarah has never forgiven Hagar for the past, but instead allowed bitterness to root down and sprout into anger and grow into murderous hatred for the slave girl.

“Sarah saw Ishmael- the son of Abraham and her Egyptian servant Hagar, making fun of her son, Isaac. So she turned to Abraham and demanded, ‘Get rid of that slave woman and her son. He is not going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac. I won’t have it!’” 21:10

I stumbled over this verse, because I couldn’t imagine a grown woman and her teenage son mocking a little toddler. This doesn’t seem very plausible. Who bullies a little baby barely out of diapers? What is there to taunt him about, when he doesn’t even understand the language of mockery at this age?

Not to mention, I was disappointed in Hagar, because I want her to rise above the petty things. So I jumped to her defense, and after checking the fine print, I found to my delight that the original Hebrew text does not have the words “of her son Isaac”. It was added later- maybe to make Sarah, mother of generations, look a little bit more justified in her reaction?

I am no biblical scholar, so don’t expect an exegesis of the text. Don't call me out on my interpretive errors, as I'm well aware of my limitations. But we can agree that whatever the reason, it was added on later. That means the text would originally read:

“Sarah saw Ishmael- the son of Abraham and her Egyptian servant Hagar, making fun. So she turned to Abraham and demanded, ‘Get rid of that slave woman and her son. He is not going to share the inheritance with my son Isaac. I won’t have it!’”21:10

“Sarah saw them making fun.” It sounds to me like perhaps Sarah saw them laughing together. In her judgmental presence they were having fun, enjoying the moment, smiling even after 14 years of social stigma in the community.

Laughter in the midst of brokenness is the victory of joy.

How was it possible for Hagar to endure 14 years of standing and being seen in a community that was embarrassed by her story? I believe the key is found in making space for joy in places it doesn’t belong.

When joy is expressed under the thumb of oppression, it’s sure to cause alarm.

And so in her jealous hatred, Sarah’s hate was indeed provoked. And anger is a sign of pain, which indicates unhealed wounds. This type of healing requires a certain amount of submission to joy, in order to survive the pain of dead things coming back to life.

Joy becomes a threat to emotional comfort.

I think that Sarah assumed the laughter was about her, because when you are on the defense everything is about you, even when it’s not. This is the delightful lie of living scared and in scarcity.

Hagar’s abundance of joy exposed Sarah’s lack. Sarah hated that moment of joy, probably because she had so few of her own. Holding onto bitterness means relegating joy to the sidelines and then losing touch with it. Like a regret from the past that you never want to see again, such is joy to those who have no tolerance for it.

And in her hate Sarah ordered the banishment of Hagar from the community. She would never laugh in the presence of Sarah ever again. She wished her dead.

Finally, after the refinement period, inappropriate and offensive joy becomes a catalyst for freedom- it delivered Hagar from slavery-

“So Abraham got up early the next morning, prepared food and a container of water, and strapped them on Hagar’s shoulders. Then he sent her away with their son, and she wandered aimlessly in the wilderness.” 21:14

She was sent away to wander the desert alone with her son.

Her community cast her out.

This is the painful moment when joy leads us into new territory, unfamiliar and scary and vulnerable.

There was no plan except to keep hurting. 

“When the water was gone, she put the boy in the shade of a bush. Then she went and sat down by herself about a hundred yards away. ‘I don’t want to watch the boy die,’ she said, as she burst into tears.” v15-16

Most people’s first reaction to inappropriate joy is to silence it with fear-based thoughts. And usually there are usually tears- lots of them. It’s the mind trying to hold onto the reality we learned from past experiences. It’s doubting the freedom of the blessing, fearing the goodness, looking for the fine print, asking “what do I owe you?”.

We have recieved an open invitation to allow joy to go deeper and rewrite our story.

“But God heard the boy crying and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, ‘Hagar, what’s wrong? Do not be afraid! God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Go to him and comfort him, for I will make a great nation from his descendants.” 21:17-18

Offensive joy is beckoning us into the wilderness.

Joy is always asking us to listen, and it usually needs to drag us out into the empty and silent desert to explain things. So it waits there patiently until the opportune moment to rush in and intrude on our fears. It has a plan to steal the things you carry for your protection, like remorse, sorrow or apathy.

“Then God opened Hagar’s eyes, and she saw a well full of water. She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a drink. And God was with the boy as he grew up in the wilderness.” 21:19-20

And so it was inappropriate joy that offended Hagar’s mistress and led her into the wilderness to discover the abundance of freedom.

Her legacy would continue on into our present day, and the repercussions of Sarah’s moment of hate and fear echo in our world even now. This story is still being told in our own lives- it is we who get to write the ending to Hagar’s story, by trusting the wilderness into which joy beckons us.

As I said earlier, joy is an offensive thief. It wants to steal your weapons and your masks and your armor. Joy wants to invade places within you that need love and abundance, healing and freedom.

 But with the right amount of persistent denial, joy can be sent away. And when this happens, seeing joy in someone else might not translate very well- you get offended by someone else’s happiness. 

You will start removing from your life all the people that point out your unhealed hurts by the way they live and love and laugh.

Joy is inappropriate because it knocks uninvited and makes brazen suggestions. 

And it will steal our arsenals of protective modalities.

 And if you are like me, you would rather hold onto the false sense of safety that comes from staying a bit cynical or bitter, clinging to hurts like they are pearls of great price, rather than allow joy to come and reroute the journey into the wilderness.

It is easy to be like Sarah, getting rid of the things that make us vulnerable. Like laughter.

I can learn a great deal from Hagar, who even after serving someone who wished she would disappear, could still laugh out loud at life and find joy in the most inappropriate spaces.

I aspire to have the courage to follow joy into the wilderness, where my story can be rewritten and my steps rerouted.

And there in the desert He will provide. 

After the refinement, He can reveal a well of joy in our hearts, because they are open, vulnerable, empty, thirsty and ready to drink. 

May we all find an abundance of laughter in the face of slavery, and may joy come after the refinement period and offend that which holds us back from a greater and more powerful narrative than we are currently living.

Sometimes you will be driving home from the grocery store, car full of bags to unload, and you will pull up to the familiar red light that you always hit, every time. And while you sit there, watching the busy intersection, you will glance up and see the white clouds where they form a great circle in the sky. 

And at that moment joy will dive into your being, with shivers and tingles from head to toe. Uninvited, unexplainable, and as real and tangible as the steering wheel in front of you. 

And you will smile, and maybe even laugh.

Joy is an offensive signpost- it reads like this:

“You cannot go back to what you have been, but neither can you go forward into what you had resigned yourself to. When this is over, slavery no longer serves you.”

Joy bides its time patiently until the opportune moment to rush in and intrude on emotional certainty. It has a plan to steal the things you carry around for your protection, like regret, bitterness or apathy.

And the invitation is to return to the refinement and wait for joy to grow offensive to your pain.

Then we can follow this ridiculous joy into the wilderness, removed and cut off from slavery. It’s a rude interruption of the negative tapes that play over and over in your head. 

The invitation is dangerous, because it is threatens your current way of thinking and upends the resignation you had planned.

And in every single moment of joy, everything has the potential to transform. Joy is a game changer, a plot twister, a single instant that can alter the entire course of your journey.

But only if you choose to trust its timing and surrender your desperate hold on the things which hold you captive.

My prayer is that we would laugh in the midst of refinement and then allow that inappropriate joy to lead us out into a life of freedom in the wilderness.

Amen and amen.

~*~

To read Pearls and Presence, click here.

To learn more about my own personal story, click here.

With gratitude for all my readers- 

Rebecca

Shame and Abel- Genesis 4

When you are underestimated you have more freedom to be yourself because nobody is looking.

I said something this week that revealed where I am on the journey to self-awareness and healing:

“My sacrifice is perfect, God, so what the heck is wrong with Your altar?” –me. Yesterday.

Because I was reading the story of Cain and Abel, and I immediately identified with the ashamed murdering brother. The one who works his rear off to put together an epic offering to present on the altar- the kind of offering that was built by himself, with his own two hands. 

He was immensely proud of presenting to his Creator something that he made by himself, with bare hands and brazen pride and deaf ears.

I was going to publish the next chapter to Pearls and Presence, because that was the plan, and it was a good one. But now I am going to write about Cain and Abel for this blog, because it’s on my heart.

Here is why: I want to write about shame. Because shame is cultivated in silence.

So readers, we need to talk.

For the New Year I have started re-reading the Bible from beginning to end for the third time in my life. I do this because after I am old and grey I will give my children my entire library of books and journals, and I want them to see that their mother underlined and marked up every single page of every single bible she ever owned. This will be a testament to them that even though I had a lot of setbacks on the journey, I was always seeking God. I was always trying to know Him more. I was always searching for more of Jesus, every day. In both good times and in bad I needed more of Him and I always knew it.

I always want more Jesus, even when I present my hard work to the altar and it gets turned down. Especially then, when I realize there is a hard line I have drawn between me and God that looks a lot like my own prideful agenda. 

I had expectations for Your response, God, and You didn't meet them!

So I write all over my bibles because I want visible, physical proof of this for my kids. I want them to know how much I lean on God’s love as I walk through this life, through mistakes and victories alike. Sometimes my parenting isn’t great, sometimes my choices aren’t admirable, sometimes I get lost or relapse into old hurts, sometimes my bitterness threatens to turn into full-fledged hatred, but my heart always returns to God and His Word. For every page that God penned His words through men, there is a page where I underlined, highlighted, and asked for Guidance.

A place where I returned to the altar with open hands, instead of closed ones grasping tightly to the things I think I own but which really own me.

When I am old I will give my children these scribbled up bibles and they will see markers of what I learned during my personal journey. That way as they are walking through their own stories as adults, they can learn from my mistakes and follow my lead- to never give up on God’s promises. To approach the altar and try again. And again.

To come to the altar with questions instead of answers, or even to show up silent with open hands.

My library and my writing will be the most important physical treasures I leave behind me. These were the first things I grabbed when a fire threatened to burn down my house last year. Second only to my purse, they were the next physical item in the house I grabbed on the way out the door. That’s how I came to realize their value.

The first time I read through all of scripture it took me about 5 years. The second time it took me one year. I’m not going for any records in speed, but now I am going for some improvement in content retention. So this time around, I’m stopping early on to contemplate and reflect. Which brought me to Genesis chapter 4, the story of Cain and Abel. The story of two brothers who bring sacrifices to the altar of God of vastly different origin.

The story of how shame led to death, because it always does if we don’t heed the warnings in our body, mind and soul.

If I am going to be as raw and honest here as I have been so far, then this is what I would say- I have started out the New Year arguing with God about my new ministry of service.

“God”, I would say, “why aren’t You using my giftings, why doesn’t anybody notice the quality of my service, what is the point of wasting the things that YOU gave me in the first place?”

Do you know how many times I have felt like an idiot in the past 6 months? Read my story. Know how many times I have called myself one since starting this journey to healing? Too many to admit. And I feel like an idiot when I realize that I argued with God- again.

"My gifts are perfect, God, why are you letting them go to waste? Did I show up at the wrong altar, what’s the problem here?”

Perfectionism leads to shame which leads to blame, which is the reason Cain murdered his brother. Because he couldn’t live with the shame of being caught in his prideful arrogance.

So when I land on the story of Cain and Abel, this reality hits home. If you were to look it up, you would find the setup for the perfect shame-story:

“When they grew up, Abel became a shepherd, while Cain cultivated the ground. ³ When it was time for the harvest, Cain presented some of his crops as a gift to the Lord. ⁴ Abel also brought a gift—the best portions of the firstborn lambs from his flock. The Lord accepted Abel and his gift,⁵ but he did not accept Cain and his gift. This made Cain very angry, and he looked dejected.”

Ok, stop right there. I have been in Cain’s position far more often than Abel’s. How many times have I done something, said something, written something that was perfect and yet God did not receive it how or when I wanted Him to. 

And I immediately argue, saying “well my sacrifice is perfect, God, I labored over it for hours and days and months, there is nothing wrong with it!” And yet, I don’t get my way. I have to submit to the lesson of walking away and rethinking and seeking what God really wants of me and then trying again.

Well when the sacrifice you bring to the altar does not get accepted, whatever that looks like for you, then there are two options: fear or love. That’s it, only two choices.

You can fear God’s judgement, which leads to shame. Or you can love God’s judgement, which makes you Abel to fail well and try again.

In the past year I struggled with presenting the wrong things before God. Granted, they were good things, perfect things even. But they were my things, created by the work of my weary efforts, scratched from the hard ground of my circumstances by my two bare hands.

The brothers had two differences: Abel was a shepherd. Cain was a farmer. In other words, Abel hung around with animals in the field all day, playing a harp, throwing rocks at predators, and writing poetry. While Cain was busting his butt farming the hard ground, a job that goes from sunup to sundown with a ton of physical labor. So when he brought his sacrifice to the altar, he was really proud of his hard work. Damn proud, with his chin held high and his pride puffed up real big.

I imagine that God probably saw that stubborn, independent arrogance, and he told Cain “if you continue to bring me the wrong sacrifices, you will sin.” Why? Because shame is sure to follow a fall when you have built your self-worth on what you produce. If your value is only as good as your product, then it has to be perfect and perfectly received, otherwise shame gets a foothold. There is no room for human error, for humility, for love.

Cain could not understand that God wanted to love him for who he was, not for what he did. He wanted to earn his Father’s love by the work of his hands, which cheapened the gift.

So if you read the chapter, you will see that Cain becomes so ashamed of God’s rejection of his offering that he eventually has to take out his brother, because every time he looks at him he is reminded of his own embarrassing shortcomings. He sees rejection where he once saw a human being. Instead of trying again, he gives up and gives in to hate.

God did warn Cain of the price of unhealed shame- "Why are you so angry? Why do you look so dejected? You will be accepted if you do what is right. But if you refuse to do what is right, then watch out! Sin is crouching at the door, eager to control you. But you must subdue it and be it's master." (v6-7)

Shame always causes disconnection. Which is why the first punishment for Cain's murder is that he is will no longer be able to work the ground. The second punishment is banishment. Cultivating will not be fruitful. As his father Adam was exiled from the garden, Cain does one better- he becomes a fugitive on the entire earth. 

He would never again be allowed to earn God’s love- he would be forced to spend a lifetime realizing that God loves him because of who he is, not because of what he does. Not because his offering looked perfect.

It was not really Cain who killed Abel- it was shame. We all fail at some point, because we are human and we are flawed. But God loves us anyways. He just wants to make us ABEL to receive love, and if we choose otherwise, we choose shame.

            My husband said to me the other day, “Read your blog again- find the part where you talk about being a perfectionist.” This was right after my argument with God about the problem with His altar. So I regrouped, reread, and came back to Jesus with totally empty hands and a whole lot of questions.

And God said to me “My beloved, in your anger do not sin because then shame gets the last word of that conversation. Let ME love you, come empty and receive my love. Do not be ashamed of who you are. I love you yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Give Me your shame and I will give you an abundance.”

When you are underestimated you have more freedom to be yourself because nobody is looking. 

But take note that God and His angels are always there, cheering you on and walking along with you and knowing the exact value of your true worth as a unique and powerful being- that is why He is completely fascinated with your soul.

Never settle for shame- you are Abel to receive love if you forgive and come back empty and try again. Try again, beloved. Try again.

Amen and amen. Today is another day to be reborn.

~*~

 

To read my book Pearls and Presence, click here.

To learn more about my own personal story of redeeming love, click here.

With gratitude for all my readers- 

Rebecca