The angel asks Hagar two questions: 'Where have you come from, and where are you going?' Like God's question to Adam in Genesis 3:9 ('Where are you?'), the questions are not informational — God knows — but relational and diagnostic. Where have you come from: the question of origin and history. Where are you going: the question of direction and future. Hagar's answer to the first is honest: 'I'm running away from my mistress Sarai.' She does not answer the second question. She does not know where she is going. The two questions together are the existential questions of the human condition — origin and destiny — and Hagar can only answer one. Luke 15:17 describes the prodigal son 'coming to himself' — the same moment of honest self-assessment in the middle of flight. The application: in whatever wilderness you are currently running through, these two questions are always on the table. Where have you come from? Where are you going? The second question is the one faith must answer.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

Publish a note on this verse