Habakkuk the Prophet wrote down his prayer-dialogue with God when the Babylonian invasion of Judah was on the horizon (i.e., around 600 BC). He begins with a complaint: Lord God, how long will your people indulge in sin and defy your justice? Answer: not much longer; the Lord will put a stop to it. But the way God acts drives Habakkuk up the wall: The holy God will use the more-wicked Babylonians to punish the less-wicked people of Judah (1:13). The Lord warns his prophet, “You won’t believe what I’m going to do!” (1:5). God acknowledges the wicked ruthlessness of the Babylonian armies—and their time will come, that is, their time to face God’s just judgment (3:16). But in the meantime, Habakkuk is reminded that “the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him” (2:20). Be still. Wait.
In the end, one zealous prophet who thought he knew best how God should run the world is humbled and brought to his knees in renewed devotion and worship (2:1; 3:2, 16). He’d assumed God was in the wrong for how he orchestrated events in history, but with ch. 3 Habakkuk is stunned by a vision of God’s mighty creation, wrath, and redemption. So he covers his mouth (3:16).
The prophecy ends with a statement of renewed faith—and a faith that is fierce, unbending, relentless. Let our brother in the Lord encourage us today to declare our trust, and leave the when and how of God’s good work up to him:
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, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places (3:17-19).
I put my trust in God, come what may. I choose to take delight in my Savior, now and forever. If I have Christ, I have enough!
