Variety: Genesis 16v6-13

⁶ ‘Sarai ill-treated Hagar; so she fled from her. ….⁷ The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert ….¹⁰ The angel said, ‘I will increase your descendants so much that they will be too numerous to count.’    ….¹³ Hagar gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.’ Genesis 16:6-13

Hagar She was an Egyptian slave in a foreign land away from her people and seemingly without anyone’s protection. But God knew Hagar and God called on her to be a part of [God’s] plan.  — Marjorie A. White, The Five Books of Moses

Many African-American slave women have left behind autobiographies telling how they would slip away to the wilderness or to “the hay-stack where the presence of the Lord overshadowed” them.  Some of them governed their lives according to their mothers’ counsel that they would have “nobody in the wide world to look to but God” — as Hagar in the final stages of her story had only God to look to….

Hagar is an ongoing source of inspiration and courage:
In the biblical story Hagar’s wilderness experience happened in a desolate and lonely wilderness where she—pregnant, fleeing from the brutality of her slave owner, Sarai, and without protection—had religious experiences that helped her and her child survive when survival seemed doomed. 
The wilderness experience meant standing utterly alone, in the midst of serious trouble, with only God’s support to rely upon. 
As the result of these hard-time experiences and the encounters with God, we are encouraged to have risk-taking faith. Though she obeyed God’s mandate for her life, Hagar dared to give a name to the God she met in the wilderness. In a sense, this God is her God, and possibly not the God of her slave holders Abram and Sarai. No other person in the Bible names God.

For example, in the midst of the violence and brutality that accompanied slavery in America, Harriet Tubman, with a price on her head, dared to liberate over three hundred slaves. She served as a spy and a general in the Civil War. She is said to have relied solely upon God for help and strength; she had no one else to look to. 
Thus we can speak of Hagar and many people in the world to day as brothers and sisters in the wilderness struggling for life, and by the help of their God coming to terms with situations that have destructive potential. 

based on the writing of Delores Williams