“I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights.” - Habakkuk 3
Last week we examined what the prophet Jeremiah was all about. Today, we take a closer look at one of my favorite names from the Old Testament: Habakkuk. While he’s traditionally considered a minor prophet, he nonetheless managed to create a poetic book of three short but prosaic chapters that found their way into the Bible. A statue of the prophet by the Renaissance sculptor, Donatello (ironically also the name of my favorite ninja turtle), still stands in Florence. The Jews consider him a member of the Levite tribe, which served as musicians in the Temple. He was an artist and a composer. Perhaps this is why the final chapter of his book is a song of prayer. And hear this . . . Habakkuk is thought to be unique from the other prophets because he acted very much like many of us routinely do: after regularly witnessing injustice and inaction, he openly questioned the wisdom of God.
One of the things I feel most guilty about in my faith on a regular basis is a common element of the human condition. I question why God allows such terrible and tragic things to happen and why He doesn’t act quickly and decisively to correct these evils and bring the world back out of chaos and into the balance we so desperately crave. Life can be difficult and perplexing. We lose friends and family. We’re cheated and mistreated. We’re horrified at acts of terror and aggression. And we see bad things happen repeatedly, time and again, over and over, to people we consider the salt of the earth. Who hasn’t? As a result, who hasn’t knee-jerked by blurting out words and prayers of harsh and accusing words at the Creator of all we hold dear?
Habakkuk felt the same way thousands of years ago - angry, confused and full of doubt and fear as his people were overrun by the enemy. Yet when we examine the third and final chapter, we find a prophet who, no matter how bleak the future may appear, has heard and seen enough from God to know unquestionably that He is a God deserving of our full and unstained trust. Habakkuk turns 180 degrees from a posture of questions and blame to a spirit of praise and thanksgiving. While we are free to question the events that surround us, we must remember that we’re not always meant to know His ways as intimately as we may selfishly and arrogantly presume. It’s an unfortunate part of life when the bad times impact us harder than the good times. Yet how remarkable is His love for us! We’ve been given a life filled with the Holy Spirit and grounded in the love of Jesus Christ so much so that we can’t help but praise God even during life’s tragedies. No matter how little we understand at the time, we thank God for the bountiful blessings that we tend to so quickly forget. Things as simple as waking up to life every day and every breath that fills our lungs. And things as complicated and miraculous as a Messiah who would come to suffer and die for all our sins so that we might have eternal life in the kingdom of God, which has no end.
May we all sing a joyful song like Habakkuk whether the storms of life are near or far. And may we always turn to God as our shelter and our strength even “though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls.” It’s at times like these when we need to pour all our trust into God and sing his praises loudly for all to hear. Our examples of unwavering faith and service can be the subtle triggers that lead the lost sheep of Jesus back into His loving embrace and ever closer to His amazing promise.
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