When Hagar fled from Sarah's wrath into the wilderness,
God moved an angel to come down and ask of her distress.
"I'm running from my owner's wife, whom I can never please."
She knew not yet that she had come before the God who sees.
The angel told her to return, that in God's great design
The son she bore would be the first of his prolific line.
She wondered how this Lord could give pronouncements such as these;
And in her wonder named this Lord to be the God who sees.
A woman drawing from a well was called out for a drink;
Samaritan woman, Jewish man - she knew not what to think.
She questioned him, and his replies left her so ill at ease;
She knew not yet that she had come before the God who sees.
She knew he was a prophet, yet he clearly was much more;
He told her everything she'd done in all her life before.
She wondered how this man could give pronouncements such as these;
And in her wonder knew this man to be the God who sees.
TEXT: Charles Spence Freeman, June 2026, after Genesis 16 and John 4.
MUSIC: Tune RESIGNATION, USA folk melody, Lewis's Beauties of Harmony, 1828.
In a session on neglected figures in hymnody (as in hymns about, not writers), the subject of biblical women inevitably came up. Of those women somehow Hagar, the servant girl of Sarah's who got rather badly treated, formed a couple of stanzas of a hymn and wouldn't let me put it aside. Then out of nowhere the woman at the well in John 4 (who wasn't even mentioned in the session) showed up saying "hey, what about me?" Since both had the experience of being uniquely seen by God, it worked well enough to make a hymn. It might not be finished, but I need to let it settle for a while.
