I Will Rejoice

Habakkuk 3:17-19

(17) Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,

(18) yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

(19) GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.

This is the very end of Habakkuk and we see that he has learned a valuable lesson. He has done a 180 from his previous lament. He wondered earlier why God ran the universe the way He does. Now he realizes that God deserves praise no matter what is happening.

I'll be honest about suffering. I've never really suffered a whole lot. My senior year in high school was pretty miserable because I didn't get along very well with my stepmother. It was no fun when my parents divorced and I was in 7th grade. We had a molar pregnancy in between Lily and Noah. None of these things were good to go through.

The only one that I endured as a Christian was the molar pregnancy. Looking back, I think it was much harder on Amanda than it was on me. I think it was hard on me only in that I didn't want to see Amanda suffer so much. At any rate, it was nothing like a cancer diagnosis or losing one of our children to disease or accident.

My point is that my experience does not carry much weight, but it seems to me from the clear reading of Scripture that we are to rejoice at all times. There will be times when the fig tree does not blossom. The Christian life is not all happy-clappy joy joy. Trials will happen. I may not have suffered through the worst that this fallen world can throw at me, but I stand on the authority of God's Word that the proper response is still rejoicing.

Of course, that is impossible apart from knowing Christ. Unless we are in Christ God is just a capricious monster who pulls the wings off of flies. But if we do know Him, we can trust that God is a loving Father who knows what is best even when we don't.

Waiting for Judgment

Habakkuk 2:2-4

(2) And the LORD answered me: "Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.

(3) For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end--it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.

(4) "Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

I'm having a conversation over at this blog about the nature of God's judgment and how we respond to the problem of evil. There are some obvious theological differences that I am going to have with that blog's author, but I don't think that we're too awfully far apart. At any rate, I think it is interesting to find myself in Habakkuk today in light of that discussion.

Habakkuk lamented to God about the problem of evil. He also wondered why the wicked were allowed to perish. He saw the Babylonians and wondered how God could allow such things to happen to His people. The verses above are God's response.

Basically, God is telling Habakkuk and us that we need to wait and trust in His timing. He will take care of the wicked. If we are righteous then we will have to live by faith. Of course, we are not righteous except for the imputed righteousness of Christ's sacrifice on the cross. That's important to note lest we become puffed up in our pietism.

At any rate, the answer is not that we need to understand. In fact, I don't think that we will ever really understand why things work out the way we do. I think it is foolish to attribute reasons to a Hurricane Katrina or the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. What I do know is that all deserve to die, but it is by God's common grace that we do not. I'm going to trust the God who saved me that He has a plan bigger than I can get my mind around. Besides, who wants to worship a God that he can completely understand?