Hagar’s story “levels a devastating blow against anyone who tries to make the case that women don’t count or that we are second-class citizens in God’s kingdom. God simply couldn’t have made a stronger statement of how much he values women and how central they are to what he is doing. Who can argue when God gives a woman like Hagar—a disenfranchised slave girl who is clinging to the bottom rung of the human ladder and utterly alone in life—this kind of one-on-one personal attention? God focuses on Hagar despite the fact that the child she carries is not the promised one and her story is only a messy interruption to the real story God is weaving. Yet he treats Hagar like she’s the most important person in the world as he follows her into the wilderness to affirm his love for her and bring a sudden and permanent end to her aloneness.”