Hagar's Prayer

Hagar's Prayer
Laura Emerson
Sermon delivered at several Unitarian Universalist churches in Texas

The story of Hagar and Ishmael  ( passages in Genesis 16 – 25) is one of the most poignant in the Bible. Who can remain unmoved by her plight?  Here we have a vulnerable young woman – a foreigner and a slave, with a child, who is cast out to her certain doom in the desert by the only people she knows!  She is certain that she will die, by the unforgiving climate, or the animals it harbors, or subject to the depredations of the people who traverse it.

Once she runs out of food, and runs out of water, and runs out of hope, she lays her son under the meager shade of some desert shrub.  She doesn't pray to be saved.  She doesn't even pray for her son to be rescued – because she has absolutely no expectation of that.  Rather, she prays to die, and asks to not have to watch her only child die first.

Some of you, I know, have had to endure this tragedy of outliving your child – every parent's worst fear.  Surely you could give us a sermon or two on the despair of profound grief, followed by the slow, incremental path of resilience.

Even for those of us who have not suffered this sorrow, Hagar's circumstances speak to us, too.  Who among us has not felt alone, afraid, and vulnerable, either as a foreigner or feeling like one in some aspect of our lives?  Who has not reeled from that horrible kick in the gut when you were rejected – ejected – by someone you relied on?  Perhaps a family member or friend, a boss, or trusted teacher or religious leader?  Hagar's story can resonates there,  too.

Permaculture: Dying Spruce = New Deck

Several years ago, my husband and I tried to build a birdhouse. No bird wanted to live in it. Then we built a stool. No person wanted to sit on it. And then we concluded that we never wanted to work together on another construction project!

I have full confidence that marriage counselors would be out of work if engaged couples attempted to build something together (or share a canoe or put up striped wallpaper). Let's just say that such endeavors clarify the yin and the yang in a couple and those who stick it out will last. In our case, because he can't cook and I can't fly, we need each other, so we stick together. However, we mutually agreed to never attempt future constructions together – never ever.