Emphasis Preaching Journal

Hagar's shoulders sagged from the burden.
Lightened fearfully by each day's meal.
The empty water bag was no more good
Than a dry snakeskin.

Each step with the boy spun the world,
And even sitting found nothing stable this side of death.
The child's burned eyes and swollen mouth
All looked the same -- red, wrinkled, bleeding.

Upon her last step before placing Ishmael under the bush
Hagar could have posed for a statue of motherhood.
Hopeless love is still love:
Unable to watch her son die,