Habakkuk for the Holidays
Habakkuk 1
If I’m honest, when I pray, I have two categories of expectation: the means God uses to answer my prayer and the timing in which God answers. The means include certain types of people or situations through which I expect God to work or make changes. My expectation on timing usually = fast.
Habakkuk has been pleading for God to intervene in the sinfulness he sees around him, but God’s answer comes with a warning that He’s working through means Habakkuk is not expecting. He’s not sending a prophet, or an angel, or a Proverbs 31 woman to show the way. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you,” God says.
He goes on to tell Habakkuk that His chosen tool of judgment on His people’s disobedience is the self-absorbed, dreaded enemy, the Babylonians, who use people for their own idolatrous ends. And God was right - Habakkuk is shocked that this is God’s answer to the perversion in his world. To Habakkuk, the Babylonians are even more depraved than Israel. How can God use depravity to correct those who don’t seem to be nearly as evil? God didn’t seem to notice that the enemy’s victory just fueled their pride.
Generations prior, this was the consequence God had actually told them would come if His people walked away from Him. Reeling from the understanding that this is God’s means, Habakkuk has a new question about timing. The opening verse began with his question, “How long will I cry out and you won’t answer?”, but in the final verse of the chapter, it shifts to, “Will the enemy’s rampage go on forever?!” Chapter 1 is bookended by critiques about timing. “How long?…forever?”
What do we do when God’s means and His timing confuse us? We keep reading into Habakkuk 2:1 for his response: we station ourselves in expectation, like a guard on a tower, to look out with eyes of faith. My station is on a built-in window bench in our living room where I anticipate hearing from God as I wrestle through his seemingly questionable means or timing in response to my prayers. Stepping into this new year, do you have a physical location that represents spiritual expectation?
