Two Boys, One Tender Father

Long before, in the days when Abraham's family lived in tents and moved from well to well, God had made an old man a promise under the night sky: a son of his own, and a family as many as the stars. Year after year Abraham and Sarah waited, until their hair was white as wool. Then one bright morning the promise came true. Sarah held a little boy in her arms, and she laughed and laughed for joy. They named him Isaac, which means laughter.

God had said it, and God did it.

But there was another boy in that house. His name was Ishmael, and his mother was Hagar. One day the laughter turned to trouble. There was no room, it seemed, for Hagar's boy anymore. So early in the morning, Abraham gave Hagar some bread and a skin of water, and sent her and her son away.

Out they walked into the wide, dry desert, just a mother and her boy, with no home and no place that wanted them.

Perhaps you know that lonely ache, the feeling of standing at the edge while everyone else belongs.

The sun was hot. The water ran out, until there was nothing left in the skin but air. And Hagar looked at her thirsty boy, and she could not bear it. She set him down under a little bush. She walked a small way off, and sat, and wept. "I cannot watch him die," she said.

The boy was crying too.

Far out in that empty place, where nobody could see them and nobody seemed to care, Someone was watching. Someone had counted every step they took. Someone heard the small, dry cry of a thirsty boy.

God heard him.

And God called from heaven to Hagar. "Do not be afraid," he said. "I have heard the boy. Get up. Take his hand. I have good ahead for him."

Then God opened her eyes. And there, where she had seen only sand and sky, she saw it. A well. Cool, clear water, right where she stood. It had been near her all along.

She filled the skin, and gave her boy a long drink, and he lived.

To God there was never a favorite son and a forgotten son. He loved Isaac, the child of the promise, and he loved Ishmael, the child in the desert, every bit as much. God loves each of his children as if that child were his only one, his favorite one, and every other child exactly that much too. When one of them gets pushed outside, he goes out after them, into the desert if he must, and opens a well right where they stand.

And long years later, God would come himself, walking into the dry and dusty places of the world. He would sit down beside the people nobody wanted and say, "Are you thirsty? Come to me. I am living water. Drink, and you will never be thirsty again." His name is Jesus, and he is still gathering in the left-out ones, and he will not come home missing a single child.

As for Ishmael, God kept his word. The boy grew up strong in the desert, an archer under the open sky, and God stayed with him all his days. And Isaac, the boy called laughter? God had one more thing to show Abraham about a father's love for his son, on a mountain, and that story comes next.