be fine with Hagar. She knows that God is one who sees and also one who listens; that is what Ishmael’s name means, Genesis 16 notes. God here lives up to the boy’s name. If you have had to watch a child die, I guess you will have mixed feelings about this boy’s story. In one sense, stories about God’s raising people from the dead, healing people, or rescuing people from oppression are little use to most of us because God does not do that for us; they may seem more hurtful than comforting. Yet they