Rev. Dan Calvo
Pittsburgh New Church: Sunday, July 27, 2025
Text:
To people who are not regenerating, it is all the same whether they do or do not know truth, and whether what they know is true or not, as long as they can pass something off as truth. In contrast, people who are regenerating spend a lot of time thinking about [doctrine] and life, because they spend a lot of time thinking about their eternal salvation. So if their supply of truth runs out, they grieve to the core, because truth is dear to their minds and hearts. (AC 2682)
Thousands of years ago a woman named Hagar wandered into the desert with her only child, Ishmael, and all they had to survive was some bread and a skin of water. Hagar walked under the blazing sun, feeling the painful burns on her skin, with no water or food to be seen for miles besides the pitiful amount of bread and water she had with her, and she kept hearing the cries of her only child echoing through the endless desert.
More than ever before in her life, Hagar was hopeless.
We all have gone through something similar to what Hagar was going through in this story. When we go out into the world we see evil all around us: spouses cheating, people becoming wealthy and powerful by stealing and lying, people being violent and hateful towards each other. It can be really easy to lose our hope that there is any good left in the world, as if we were wandering through an unforgiving desert with only a little bit of water and some bread to keep us alive. How can we possibly survive this challenging world, keeping our hope alive? How can we survive the desert?
In this story, Hagar had a little bit of bread and a skin of water. In the Word, “bread” symbolizes good. It is the love in our heart, the love that we have for our neighbor, our family, our friends, and our community. That good can feed us just like bread does, and it can keep us alive through hard times. On the other hand, in the Word, “water” symbolizes truth, the knowledge of good things from the Lord that have a direct application to our life, and in this case they symbolize the more simple, basic truths that we carry with us when we first go out into the world, like the 10 Commandments. We can be nourished by those truths in the same way that water does.
So, we wander into the world, and we try and survive with that good and truth, and we try to keep our hope and values alive, just like Hagar was trying to keep her son Ishmael alive. Ishmael, being Hagar's child, was an extension of her. She loved him more than anything else in the world, and she was trying to keep him alive with the little bread and water they had. In that same way, when we go out into the world and we see all the hopelessness that surrounds us, we may try to keep our values and our hope alive by feeding it what little good and truth we have. When we encounter the difficult challenges of life, we may try to hold on to hope by doing good for others and practicing the simple truths that guide us.
However, this is not easy by any means. This is still the desert: unforgiving, difficult, and deadly. We may look out into the world and realize that even while working to keep our hope alive, the sheer amount of strength it takes to make it through these challenges is overwhelming. In fact, it may very well be impossible.
What seems to be the easiest thing to do in those situations is to just give up. To just let go of hope and our values and accept the inevitable. This is what happened with Hagar in the story. Hagar ran out of water in the desert, and she couldn't take it anymore. So, Hagar left her son Ishmael under a bush, and she moved away so that she wouldn't have to see her only child die in pain. Then she cried. She was completely defeated, unable to do anything to save her child from the deadly situation they were in. The only way she could cope at that moment was to move away so she wouldn’t see her son starve to death.
We’ve all felt it at some point, that feeling: despair. We feel that we are not going to survive the desert, that the good and the truth that we have won’t be enough, and we're overwhelmed by the sheer amount of hopelessness around us. Then we think to ourselves, “I'm just going to let go of hope. I’m not going to make it through this, so I am going to let go of hope, values, and faith so that I at least don't suffer seeing those things I love die. If I do that, life will be easier, and I’ll be able to at least get by.”
Like Hagar, who couldn’t bear to watch the death of her son, we may decide to turn away and let go of hope and surrender to the inevitable. In this state of hopelessness, we think that there's no way out… Except that there always is.
In the story, the angel of the Lord came down and saw Hagar and talked to her. He said to her, “What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is” (Genesis 21:17). Whenever we feel that we're alone and that there is no hope, and that we're not going to survive the challenge ahead of us, there is always someone who is taking care of us: The Lord. He's never gone, and He's never ignoring us – in fact he knows every single thing that goes on in our life at every second of every day. We will not be left in the desert alone, there is always hope even in the hardest times.
What’s interesting is that a few years ago, Hagar was in a situation that was almost exactly like this one. When Hagar was still a servant and she was tasked with giving a child to Abraham, there was a point at which she really feared for her life. She was scared for her own safety because Sarah, Abraham's wife, was not happy with Hagar and there was a lot of tension between them. So, Hagar left the house of Abraham and wandered into the desert to try to escape and protect herself. After this happened, she was crying in the desert, and then the Lord said to her, “do not be afraid, go back to Abraham and his family, because your child will grow up and become a great nation. You will have too many descendants to even be able to count them. I will protect you and you will make it through this.” At that moment, the Lord made a promise to Hagar that He was going to take care of her, and that's a promise that the Lord has made with every single person in this room today. The Lord has already promised us that He'll take care of us, that He’ll get us through the desert. He’s promised us that there is always hope. Now, the Lord didn’t promise us that life will be easy, because that would be a lie, and the Lord would never lie to us. But He promised us that while there are going to be things that we can't handle, there is absolutely nothing in the universe that The Lord Himself can't handle.
When we are faced with the temptation to give up on hope, we sometimes forget that just like Hagar, we've made it through the desert before. We have already experienced temptation and challenges before, but we made it through. So whatever desert we are crossing right now, we can survive it again because the Lord is with us. In those moments it’s good to look back on the times where we thought that there was no hope, and look at our life now, and think to ourselves, “wow, I thought that I wouldn't make it, but I did. I thought that there was no hope and yet there it was, the Lord had my back.”
In the story, the Lord made a well of water appear for Hagar and Ishmael in the middle of the desert. As we mentioned earlier, “water” symbolizes truth. However, at this point in the story we are looking at a massive amount of water compared to what little water Hagar had with her. This is like the difference between the simple truths that we have memorized, and the truths that we can find in the Word. Whatever amount of truths that we can carry in our minds is almost nothing compared to all the powerful, universal truths that we can find in the source itself: the Word. When we turn to the Word and really look for those truths that will help us survive the desert, we will find a massive source of nourishment that will bring us back to life.
What are some of the deeper truths that can get us through the desert? Well, first and foremost, there’s the truth that there's nothing bad that happens in the world or in our life that the Lord can't bring something good out of. We have the truth that there is good within every single person in the world, whether we can see it or not. We have the truth that the Lord is guiding all things to a good result to eternity. Not just tomorrow, not just next month, not just next year: eternity. In times of temptation and hardship we can hold on to those truths that we find in the Word and the Writings, and we can bring them into our minds and hearts, and they can help us make it through the desert.
Not only that, but those things can keep our hope alive and bring it back to life when we think it’s gone. In the story, the Lord told Hagar, “Get up, lift up the boy, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him” (Genesis 21:18), and Hagar was able to give some water to Ishmael so he could survive. Ishmael was able to rise again, and they were able to make it through the desert. Our hope and our values can survive this desert, they can survive this hopelessness. We can do this by remembering the truths we were talking about, and by applying those truths in our lives. When we bring our hope and values back when we thought we weren't going to make it, in time we may realize that our hope and values become much stronger after we survive that challenge.
In the story, Ishmael didn't just survive the desert: he thrived in it. He continued to live in the wilderness, and he became an archer, a powerful warrior. He grew up and found a wife, and later on his descendants became a great nation just as the Lord promised. In our own lives, the more times we make it through the desert, the stronger we become. Overcoming those moments of despair and temptation holding on to the truths that the Lord gives us will make our hope stronger, it will make our faith stronger, it will make our values stronger. So that the next time that we are faced with the adversity and hopelessness of the world, not only can we survive, but we can also thrive. That's what the Lord wants for every single one of us.
When Hagar was left in the desert with nothing but a handful of bread and a bit of water, trying to keep herself and her only child alive, she lost hope. But she was not alone, she was able to survive and thrive in the desert thanks to the Lord. The Lord brought her hope back to life. We must always remember how we can make it through the desert as well, how we can hold on to hope in a world that doesn't want us to hold on to hope. We can hold on to hope by remembering those truths, by keeping the Lord in our mind and heart, and we will be nourished. When we think of the hope that we are trying to keep alive, let us remember that just like in the story, the Lord has told us to not be afraid, for He has heard our voice.
Amen.