Habakkuk

The prophecy of Habakkuk is a brief three chapters. Between the foreign names and nations, weathering the  message of doom, it's easy to mentally check out and blow through this book.  Just being honest.  

The prophets are not the easy ride of a narrative--within the chapters you have present situations, future predictions, visions, curses, messages from God, restoration, and poetry.  It's not a genre I readily gravitate towards or feel solid in my understanding of.  

To me it feels like hiking a ridgeline in our North Carolina mountains once the trees come out.  You are high up, but you don't always get the views. You spend a lot of time hiking through tall trees with the forest floor as your backdrop.  Occasionally, the trees permit a view--that's it--they permit it.  And then the view is a notable break, a highlight among the terrain.

The prophets can be like that for me--reading, scanning, thinking, oops--what was that chapter about exactly? Re-read, rethink, then a line pops out. Here are some:

"The paths God takes are older than the oldest mountains and hills." Habakkuk 3:6 MSG

This reminds me of the father's comment in Karen Blixen's "Babette's Feast, "God's paths run across the sea and the snowy mountains, where man's eye sees no track."

God's ways are unfathomable but relentless, aged and sure.

"Counting on GOD's Rule to prevail, I take heart and gain strength. I run like a deer."  Habakkuk 3:19  

Here I think of the comfort of God's rule--both now and in the future.  To trust in that rule, feel the weight and surety of it, leaves us, as an integral part of His greater plan, in great freedom of spirit.  I think of our rat terrier leaping in the mountains when I read "run like a deer"--it's joyful to her, her native habitat, more familiar to her than the confines of our four walls and central heat.  She's made to leap in the woods. We are made to run in the freedom of God.

Another thing I appreciate about Habakkuk is that he teaches the value of waiting and questioning. To me, I can wait---I can do it--but there is a comfort in being able to converse, to question, to think aloud about the purpose of waiting:

"What's God going to say to my questions? I'm braced for the worst. I'll climb to the lookout tower and scan the horizon. I'll wait to see what God says, how he'll answer my complaint." Habakkuk 2:1 MSG

To feel that one can be honest about the reality of waiting is huge because that's what we are all experiencing to one degree of another. We wait in this world. We wait in our lives. It all feels pregnant with possibility and treasure, but we never quite get there. When we turn each corner of life, it seems there is just more waiting ahead.  I can wait with Habakkuk on God, but can we be free to question and to acknowledge the bus has not come yet?

"It aches for the coming—it can hardly wait! And it doesn't lie. If it seems slow in coming, wait. It's on its way. It will come right on time." -Habakkuk 2:3 MSG

And when the bus seems late, feels late, whether it is misperception of my mind or misreading of the schedule, it helps me to be able to move in that, express that.  And when Habakkuk affirms that it's all on schedule---not early, not late, not forgotten, not haphazard, that I am in the right place, right space, in the exact right sequence, I can rest too.

There is this sense of inevitability, of unfolding, in Habakkuk that feels like sense of rest in Psalm 23 when David says he will lie down in green pastures.  For me, the resolution of the questions, of the misunderstanding of man, of the seeming injustice of this present creation, feels glorious.  While the greedy and manipulative people and nations of this earth struggle to achieve, God "makes sure nothing comes of that but ashes (Habakkuk 2:13).  But there is no delay.  It seems like a delay--it feels like His plan is being undermined, but He is active:

"Meanwhile the earth fills up with awareness of GOD's glory as the waters cover the sea." -Habakkuk 2:14 MSG

We are urged to listen at the end of Chapter 2:

 "But oh! GOD is in his holy Temple! Quiet everyone—a holy silence. Listen!" Habakkuk 2:20 MSG

The Message's translation here is so interesting. It suggests that Habakkuk's is subjective, wholly shaped by God:

"The problem as God gave Habakkuk to see it..." Habakkuk 1:1

Habakkuk begins with a complaint against God, a cry.

Hab 1:2  GOD, how long do I have to cry out for help before you listen? How many times do I have to yell, "Help! Murder! Police!" before you come to the rescue? 

Hab 1:3  Why do you force me to look at evil, stare trouble in the face day after day?

This feels very familiar to our world's mindset:

 "They call strength their god." Habakkuk 1:11 MSG

There is a sense of present frustration in the first chapter of Habakkuk that I can fully relate to.  Why allow the wicked their season? Why the silence?  Why the wait?  As a person of faith in a world where faith is relativized and treated like a self-help delusion, it's easy to feel like we are these fish floating in the ocean without direction:

"You're treating men and women as so many fish in the ocean, Swimming without direction, swimming but not getting anywhere." Habakkuk 1:14

There is this extended image that Babylon is poaching the fish out of God's waters, and they are helpless to stop it.  This feeling resonates in me--not now--but in the past. I've felt like that fish. I've felt like the target of a sniper. I get it.

This is all out of order, but I'm making a mark to say "I've been here, I've wondered too. I find an ally in Habakkuk's perceptions and questions, comfort in the coming obviousness of God's presence and reign.  It's enough for the moment--it gives me the glimpse through the trees onto the larger landscape, and I feel able to endure the waiting.