“And the angel also said, You are now pregnant and 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…Thereafter, Hagar used another name to refer to the Lord, who had spoken to her. She said, You are the God who sees me.” Sarah, Abraham’s wife, gave Hagar, her servant, to Abraham as a concubine so that she would have Abraham’s child as was the social custom for a barren wife. God had promised Abraham and Sarah they would have a son and and the number of their descendants would be as numerous as the stars (vs. 15:5). Because they were both elderly (Abraham was 99 and Sarah was ten years younger), they were skeptical that God’s promise could be fulfilled through them so they tried to work it out themselves. When Hagar became pregnant, she began to treat Sarah with contempt. In return Sarah treated Hagar harshly and Hagar ran away. Hagar was beside a spring of water when an angel of the Lord appeared to her and told her to return and submit to Sarah and promised that her son, whom she would name Ishmael, would also have more descendants than she could count (vs. 15:9). Hagar named the well Beer-lahai-roi, which means “well of the Living One who sees me.” The name of the well and the name, Ishmael, which means “God hears” were reminders to Abraham and Sarah that God sees affliction and hears the cries of those in need. Sarah and Abraham should have asked God for help (as did their son Isaac in Genesis 25:21) rather than taking the fulfillment of God’s promise into their own hands. What seems like impossible difficulties can be resolved through God’s intervention. God sees the difficulties and hears the cry of the afflicted and can miraculously resolve the problem. God is the One Who Sees and Hears you. He sees your difficulty and hears your cries for help and He will answer and intervene on your behalf.