The God of Hagar, Jochabed, and Rahab

I just came by to say today that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, yes He is.

And He’s also the God of Hagar, Jochabed, and Rahab.

He’s the God who sees the predicament that women have been in since the love, adventure, and partnership of Genesis 2 devolved into the domination structures of the fall in Genesis 3.

Watch His hand as He subverts the fall along the margins, the silences, the spaces of the Bible. Revealing Himself to the Egyptian slave woman who was abused in a twisted attempt to make God keep His promise. His remembrance of the Hebrew women via vigorous births of beautiful “illegal” children in defiance of the law of Egypt. The faithfulness of God to a foreigner woman who saw Him more clearly than those for whom the Red Sea parted.

There are people today who would convince us that our skin, our body, how we hold space in the world, is a defect, an embodied inferiority, an embarrassing stain on the tapestry of Ideal Humanity. They hold the spotlight to specimens of true godliness, and we live in the shadows.

The darkness is a place of mystery and gestation. A place from which worlds form, days begin; the place where the Savior came into the world. But you’d have to study a woman to know how beautiful the dark can be.

[Yes, I know that there are dark/light juxtapositions that say “dark:bad, light:good.” And yes to the theological contrast—I am not here to oppose that. Just breathe.]

Think about the dawn of creation. Picture this: “and it was evening and it was morning, the first day.” Think about the first Passover meal. Picture the shepherds keeping watch over their flock. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the sky above Jesus’ tomb at early dawn—as the women approached.

The God of Hagar, Jochabed, and Rahab scans the dark corners of the world’s stories. The places were survivors have enough for one more day. He dwells with those who are being ground down by those who offer the fall—”he shall rule over you”—as adulterated salvation. When the Lord scans the earth for spirit-and-truth worshipers, rarely does He find them performing under a spotlight.

The hushed, silent, dark, unseen places are where we encounter Him so often. It is where God wants to be, so often. A sign of maturity is when folk take themselves out of the spotlight and give honor to the hidden. What is it brother Paul said? “On the contrary, those members that seem to be weaker are essential, and those members we consider less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our unpresentable [read: internal organs…functioning unseen] members are clothed with dignity” (1 Corinthians 12:22-23).

I came by here today to say that if you are feeling overwhelmed by the spotlight and noise, if you feel invisible, you are not alone. The Lord is near to you. He wants to be where you are. The spotlight seekers already have their light source. God’s optional.

But the God of Hagar, Jochabed, and Rahab sees you—even when His representatives are too busy preening and plotting to care a whit about you. God created you with an indomitable grit. He adores that about you. When the Son became flesh, He was raised by a woman with grit and a strength of character forged in suffering, and held fast by knowing the prophets’ words of justice and jubilee.

We are the daughters of Hagar, Jochabed, and Rahab, the heirs of courage, honored by Him. We are mothers to children all around us who need to know that God delivers in the darkness. He makes a way, through you.