Habakkuk 1:1-4; 12-14
O LORD, how long shall I cry, And You will not hear? Even cry out to You, “Violence!” And You will not save. Why do You show me iniquity and cause me to see trouble? For plundering and violence are before me; There is strife, and contention arises. Therefore the law is powerless, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; therefore perverse judgment proceeds… Are you not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness. Why do you look on those who deal treacherously, and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he? Why do you make men like fish of the sea, like creeping things that have no ruler over them?
I think at the root of me stuffing my emotions down and not dealing with my doubts is pride. I don’t want people to see that I am not good enough. To know that I don’t have all the answers. To realize the depths of my insufficiencies. So, something that immediately spoke to my soul, before I even consciously realized it, as I studied Habakkuk, was the realization of the humility that he approached the LORD with. He’s a prophet. A leader of the people, their connection with God. He was the one that was supposed to have all the answers. God spoke to him. And yet, he wasn’t ashamed to go to the Lord and say that he doesn’t understand. That humility is a piece of what makes Habakkuk so beautiful, because as Paul was told many years later, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”
And so, Habakkuk opens with a question… Nothing is right in the world, God. The small segment of the world that worships you can’t find justice. The wicked people have all the power. Why aren’t you watching? Why aren’t you listening? Why don’t you care?
Habakkuk knew God was (and is) a God of justice, knew God loved goodness, and he didn’t see that reflected in Babylon’s prosperity and plundering. And he had the humility to admit that he didn’t understand his infinite God. I heard, or more likely, read, a quote once that went something to the effect of, “I can no more comprehend my infinite God than the pancake I ate for breakfast this morning can comprehend me.” Now, I didn’t eat a pancake for breakfast, I ate a raspberry scone, but that isn’t the point. The point is a pancake doesn’t have a brain, so it can’t even understand that it doesn’t understand that there is a being infinitely more powerful and knowing that created it and ultimately controls its destiny. That is how much greater God is than us. And then some. So, first of all, He is okay with us not understanding Him. He knows we can’t. It is good for us to have questions, because it will force us to come to him.
The second part of that is that He knows the questions in the depths of our hearts, so we might as well be honest about them. Psalm 139 says,
“O LORD, You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up; You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Oh there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O LORD, You know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before, and laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high, I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there Your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.”
God knows the doubts. He sees the hurt, and the places the doubts are coming from. He isn’t fooled by the smile on your face or the confident way you spew answers when your friends ask you questions.
And so, with that, I turn to my heart. It hurts with the things in I see in this world that don’t make sense to me. Things like God’s will for my life, and why I can’t have a higher capacity for living it out? Why did He make me the way He made me? Things like why He brought me here, to this place of brokenness? Why he hasn’t moved in the lives of people I love, like the friend from high-school that I have been praying for and having spiritual conversations with for eight years? Where is His Spirit of wisdom? And I know the world has bigger questions than I do. Why does God allow the ravages of natural disasters? Or gunmen to fire on concert crowds? Why do we still live in a world so desperately in need of racial reconciliation?
My soul groans within me. But that is how I know this world is not my home… 2 Corinthians 5:1-2; 7 says
“We have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven… For we walk by faith, not by sight.”
Jesus will come again, the Prince of Peace, and bring Shalom for my soul. And in the waiting, I will follow Habakkuk, and in doing so, I will pray to gain a larger view of God and his character. Habakkuk 2:1: I will stand my watch and set myself on the rampart. And watch to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer when I am corrected.”
You’re coming into the middle of the story. Read Part 1 and Part 3.
