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Did you ever find jewels in a wilderness? Sometimes they are there, you know; and these may be jewels of various characters and colors, and may be found in wildernesses of many kinds.

For example, recently reading a story from the book of Genesis, I found myself scrambling through a tangle of moral and ethical issues, a whole wilderness of questions about right and wrong. Then suddenly, as I read the story, I came surprisingly upon this jewel, a dozen words set neatly in the midst of the narrative.

Now, in the story, God is speaking, and these are his words: "What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard ..." (Genesis 21:17).

First: "What troubles you?" Hagar was in grave distress. She was Egyptian, but was now four or five hundred miles from her homeland. The rich and powerful Abraham had brought her to Canaan as his wife's servant, or slave. When his wife Sarah failed to bear a child, she and her husband worked out a plan in which Hagar would bear a child for him, and this she did, naming the boy Ishmael.

Sarah later was able to have her own baby, a boy she named Isaac. Having no further need for Hagar, and being jealous of her and her child, Sarah persuaded Abraham to banish them from the household. This he did; giving Hagar a little bread and water, he ordered her and her son to leave. For a while they wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba, and then within a few days their supplies of bread and water were all gone.

As I say, Hagar was in grave distress. She was without food or drink, without tools or weapons, alone with her starving child in a wild and desolate region, having no friends to whom to turn. She gently placed her child in the shade of a desert shrub, and, weeping, sat down not far away, feeling that momentarily the child would die.

The child cried, and God heard the cry. I think he always hears cries like that. And he heard Hagar's weeping; and he spoke to her, asking a strange, strange question: "What troubles you, Hagar?"

"What troubles you?" For heaven's sake, wasn't it obvious? Among all who ever observe the human condition, God should have known most of all what Hagar's troubles were, and no doubt he did. Doesn't he always know what our troubles are? He may even understand them better than we sometimes do. So, God's seemingly strange question of Hagar may have been more appropriate than we at first realize.

After all, our troubles are not always what we think they are. Perhaps God would like us to examine them somewhat carefully and view them more objectively than we sometimes do.

Here, for instance, is a young man whose wife has just left him, and he considers her going to be a giant-size trouble for him. His real trouble, though, is not that she is gone, but that he drinks so much that she just couldn't stand him any longer.

And here is another fellow, unemployed, and considered to be among the "homeless." He feels that his homelessness is his problem; but it isn't; his great problem is that he is so bossy, so opinionated, and so generally obnoxious that nobody can tolerate him for very long in a workplace.

This is not to say that we don't sometimes have real troubles, but that sometimes we have illusions about what our real troubles are; and perhaps God would like to hear the answer that you or I might give to the question he asked of Hagar: "What troubles you?"

So, John, Mary, Hagar, or whoever you are, what troubles you? It's of interest, isn't it, that God called Hagar by her name. There she was, just a servant woman, alone with her child in a wilderness, and God knew her name.

Hagar was no stranger to God, nor are we. It was not necessary for him to inquire of her: "Who are you? I see you weeping; I hear the child crying. But who are you anyway?" God already knew; he had no need for someone to introduce the two of them. Not only did God know Hagar, but I'm sure he also knew all about Sarah and Abraham and that terrible thing they had done to this lonely and desperate woman.

There can be no question about it, Hagar had real troubles, as, of course, all of us sometimes do. It often seems that the world is filled with them; and as though there weren't real ones, a whole passel of others are often invented or imagined.

Did you hear of that fifth grade lad who believed the Matterhorn to be a horn people blow when something is the matter? If this were true, ours would be a more noise-plagued world than it already is. So let's be thankful the Matterhorn is a mountain!

However, while some troubles are imagined, or somewhat so, others, as many of us know, are, like Hagar's, sadly and tragically real. In the book of Job, we read that "mortal born of woman" is "few of days and full of trouble" (Job 14:1). Also, Job tells us that "human beings are born to trouble, just as the sparks fly upward" (Job 5:7).

Many of us can share the feeling of poet Sara Teasdale: "My soul is a dark ploughed field in the cold rain." Out of heartache or heartbreak, many of us know the agony: "My soul is a broken field ploughed by pain." We have walked, sometimes alone, and may yet again, in deep, dismal valleys where dark shadows are.

There is, however, help for us when we must walk there. With this, we must now go on to the second facet of this jewel we examine, and this one offers a full measure of hope and encouragement: "Do not be afraid."

This was God's message to Hagar on that terrible day in the wilderness of Beersheba; and if we listen carefully, I think we may hear God say this also to us, whatever the wilderness to which we have come or may ever come. And to all that God says about this, life itself adds some notable postscripts.

There are certain aspects of trouble we are greatly helped to understand better than we sometimes do.

First, consider this: Trouble is not the final destination of our life. It is only a juncture on the journey, only a point in the passing.

For us who travel this Christian road, who walk with the Christ who is "the way" (John 14:6), no trouble has the power to last forever. The Christ who has overcome has included our troubles in his overcoming.

I think Jesus meant it when he said, "Your pain will turn into joy" (John 16:20). I think Israel's ancient singer put it correctly in Psalm 30, saying to us: "Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning."

Nightfall is always followed by a sunrise; every tunnel comes out somewhere; whatever the trouble, "this, too, will pass." For, you see, trouble is always occasional, circumstantial; it is occasioned by this or that circumstance; and circumstances come and go, and will all at length be gone. Our life, redeemed by Christ, will be free of them.

And do, please, think about this: Our troubles are usually not as bad as they seem to be; they appear worse than they really are; they loom so large in our sky that we often allow them to shut out the light of all our stars. When the heavy, black cloud hangs low above us, we can see only its dark underside, while on its upperside it is bright and beautiful, bathed by day in the light of the sun and by night the stars.

And now another thing, and we must understand this also: However oppressive the trouble, life is never all trouble at any one time. It helps to lift up the face and look among the clouds for places the sun comes through -- and those places are always there.

A common difficulty for us is that when a trouble descends upon us, it triggers a sort of avalanche, and everything else comes rolling down also. A young boy once put it this way: "A feller starts crying on account of the bad thing that hurts him, and then he keeps on crying for all the things that ever hurt him in all his life."

Harold Bosley once told about a troubled woman who came to him in great agitation, and poured out a long roster of indictments against her husband. Breathlessly, she described him as an utter undesirable in every way; everything about him was bad, with nothing good. Bosley sat quietly and listened until the woman finally ran out of breath and complaints. Concluding, she asked, "And now, Dr. Bosley, what would you do about a man like this?" Quietly, Bosley replied, "I would kill him." Startled by that reply, the woman said, "You would!" And Bosley answered, "Of course, no question about it; but, lady, the fact is: No man can possibly be as bad as you say your husband is."

That poor woman had, of course, done what many of us sometimes do: In her mind she had multiplied her trouble until it filled the whole of her sky, horizon to horizon. Yes, I know it is difficult to see a trouble objectively when we are compelled to stand right in the middle of it.

However, when the cloud hangs dark and low over us, we can at least, if willing, look for rifts that may reveal the sky. And the sky is there, and will be there when the last of the clouds have long since passed away. The sky is permanent; the clouds are not.

And do consider this also: What seems ill can sometimes serve us well. Glenn Clark, founder of Camps Farthest Out, said that at one of the camp assemblies a woman came to him with a small verse that, as I recall, she had written. The stanza goes this way: "I stubbed my toe on a trouble/ And oh how it did hurt;/ But when I looked at it carefully,/ I saw a diamond in the dirt."

It is indeed true that sometimes our troubles enable us to see diamonds we never knew were there, and, except for the trouble, would never have known. Someone has noted that trouble is a stretcher and grace is a filler. We are not far amiss to say that troubles come to make larger places in the heart for joy.

And most of us know, I think, that there is a kind of maturity that grows out of pain, and apparently only there can ever take root for growing. Historically, in nearly 2,000 years of time, the church of Jesus Christ never prospered more than when it underwent the most severe of its trials.

Also, and I think this very important, our troubles can make us more willing and more ready to receive the help of God. When all goes well, we usually don't so much feel the need of what God may do for us. But our feeling of self-sufficiency quickly diminishes or disappears when trouble comes and holds us in its unrelenting grasp, and we want it to turn us loose and it won't.

At age eighteen months, Stephen was a rather independent, self-sufficient sort of child, always preferring to do everything himself. But when his foot became stuck between the slats of his playpen or he failed to get the round block into the square hole, he would invariably utilize a single word from his expanding vocabulary, and that word was trouble.

"Trouble," he would plaintively call out; and right then Stephen's parents knew that their son was ready to receive some help. And aren't we grown-ups much like that in relationship with our Lord? As the child needs the parent, we need the Lord all the time, but so often we seem not to realize it until trouble comes.

I don't know, but maybe God welcomes our voice when he hears us cry out, "Trouble! Trouble!" For perhaps then he has a chance at us that we had always denied him before. Perhaps then we will allow him to work with us and do things for us that he had all the while desired to do.

So, should our troubles make us afraid? I know it's awfully difficult not to feel dread or apprehension. But it helps somewhat, doesn't it, to know that all trouble is only temporary, that it usually seems worse than it is, that it may bring blessings we otherwise would never receive, and that it can make us more open to the touch of God upon our lives.

While knowing all this may help at least a little, there is something else to know that will help even more. It is that third thing that God said to Hagar, the ultimate of encouragement and hope that came to her, and that I hope may come to you and me. The word is this: "God has heard."

God has heard the cry; he has heard the weeping; he has seen the tears. He who knows our name, whose own we are, who understands all about us, our longings of spirit, our questings of mind and soul, the depth of the pain we feel -- this God has heard our cry.

And he comes to us in the wilderness where we wander hungering and thirsting. If you wonder whether God bothers about our troubles, the answer is yes, yes a thousand times over, yes with emphasis, yes with an exclamation point!

Comes the Christ -- coming, first of all, long ago into our world -- and then, now, here to you and to me. He knows our name and our need; and at this very point to which we have come on this pilgrimage of ours, he comes and meets us here.

What troubles you? Anciently, for certain disciples of Jesus, it was a terrifying storm on the Sea of Galilee. The night was dark around them; the waves threatened to overflood their small craft. But Jesus came to them, walking through the storm, borne up by the very waves that threatened them so; and coming to them, he said, "Take heart; it is I; do not be afraid" (Mark 6:50).

When the storm is upon us, we would prefer that it go away; sometimes it does, and ultimately all storms will. But sometimes, at least in the short term, the winds keep screaming and the waves continue to rage around us.

When this happens, the ultimate comfort is in knowing that God is there. In his 88 years, John Wesley said many fine things; the very finest, however, was probably his last spoken word. As he lay in London dying, his final words were these: "The best of all is: God is with us." The very last words in the Gospel according to Matthew are these words of Christ to his disciples: "Remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Let us hear him, then, when in the midst of our storm-tortured times, he comes up close and whispers, "Do not be afraid; it is I."

Hagar survived her troubles to become the mother of a great nation; and the word that came to her in the wilderness is the word that comes to us anytime we truly pray: "Do not be afraid, for God has heard."