Fires
in the West, earthquakes in the North, migrants plea for asylum to the South, blizzards
in the Midwest, senseless shootings every couple months, and our nation seems
that it will be ripped apart from the inside due to turmoil and contention
among us. As we read these curated sections of Habakkuk we can see how little
the world has changed and we can all relate to Habakkuk’s cry, “How long? ...
Violence... wrong doing ... trouble ... destruction… strife and contention ... (it
seems) justice never prevails...the wick surround ... and justice comes forth
perverted.”
What
do we do in the face of it all? Weekly, daily, we call out to God but tragedy
piles upon tragedy. There have been so many shootings in the recent past that I
cannot name them all, much less keep them straight. We call out to God, and we
call out to God, and we call out to God. Our knees are sore from praying, our
eyes burn with the tears and bodies tremble with the pain of it all, still event
piles upon event, hurt upon hurt, turmoil follows chaos, and calamity trails
behind like an undesired caboose. But even an unwanted caboose would bring hope
because it would mark the end to what seems to be a never ending train of
tragedy that just keeps trialing along, keeping us from passing on to a better
land, a more pleasant place. “O Lord, How long?”
I
don’t think we need to fully understand the internal and external turmoil the
countries of Israel and Judah were in when Habakkuk spoke these words, to
understand the place from which he spoke them. If Habakkuk stood in our place
in this world today, his cry would not vary much at all from this one he made
thousands of years ago. Violence, injustice, strife and contention it all rings
true, it all sounds all too familiar, the cry of his hear, “How long?”with its respite
nowhere in sight, we are Habakkuk and Habakkuk is us.
And
so we join Habakkuk on his watch tower, keeping watch by day and by night.
Waiting, waiting for the light on the horizon, waiting for salvation to come,
waiting for a sign, a glimmer of peace, a glimpse of a vision that says the day
is coming.
And
so Habakkuk waits, and waits and waits, eyes trained on the eastern sky looking
for the light to come, the dawn’s first light, for the coming of redemption,
the coming of salvation, of hope, of mercy and justice, waiting for God to
move, to act, to make all things that are currently so wrong right. He calls
out to God in prayer, in desperation, in anticipation that God will act and he
waits. Waits with hope, knowing that God is coming, just as surely as we know
the sun will rise each morning. The night is often so long, and when the clouds
are dense and thick the darkness seems impenetrable, yet even after the darkest
and gloomiest nights the dawn always comes, the sun always appears, and a new
day always begins.
We
like Habakkuk need to watch and to wait. Even as we cry out to God in our
desperation, even as chaos and turmoil, death and destruction, sin and brokenness
are all around us, even when wickedness hems us in, even as the world seems to
be tearing itself apart, we look for the light to come. Even when the dawn
seems to be never dawning we wait, we hope, we anticipate a better world. For
even as Habakkuk stood waiting for Christ to come, we also wait for Christ to
come again.
We
like stories. They are complete. Even as we read the first word the last word
has already been written. The plot will work itself out. In the middle we never
doubt that the end will come. When we begin we do so anticipating its closing.
When we are in the middle we might not know how the events will play themselves
out, we do not know what the characters will do, we do not know what surprises
the author has in store for us, but we do know there is a final chapter, an
ending paragraph, a closing word and we read on knowing that we are always working
our way toward the finale.
I
am an advid reader. I love reading, fiction, non-fiction, I am always reading
something (often times many somethings). Most of the time I am a “good” reader,
I read all the chapters, all the paragraphs in their proper order from first to
last, but I would be lying if I said that I have never peeked to the end of the
book, that I have never “snuck” and read the last sentence, paragraph or even
page. My rules of reading (and many other people’s) say this is a kind of
cheating, but I have broken these rules, because I could not bear not knowing
that things are “alright” in the end, that my hero does not fail, that my
favorite auxiliary character is still around on the last page. So that I can
make it through the middle, the darkest parts of the book, knowing that things
will be alright in the end, sometimes, I look to see, to assure myself that
they will be.
We
have that assurance. We know things will be alright in the end. We know how
things play out. We know that goodness wins, that all the wrongs are set right,
that righteousness will rule and all wickedness is stamped out. We can move
through the dark middle parts knowing that the brokenness is healed and that
things turn out “alright” in the end. We have that assurance, God has given us
a glimpse of the last page, of the final word and it is God’s word and that
word, is peace, justice and mercy. That word is truth, goodness, and love. That
word is God’s word and it is a good one.
Right
now we are in the middle, the darkness is thick, injustice runs deep, there is calamity
and chaos all around, death and destruction seem to rule and peace seems to be
a far off unobtainable concept for which overly smiling beauty queens tends to advocate.
In
the middle of the Two Towers Sam, say this, “It's all wrong, by rights we
shouldn't even be here. But we are. It's like in the great stories...The ones
that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were, and sometimes you
didn't want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy. How could the
world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened. But in the end, it's
only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will
come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the
stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small
to understand why. But I think,…, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those
stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were
holding on to something.”
We
are in the middle, we are the people who are slogging through the darkness, and
we are given every chance to turn back, to give up hope, to look away and stop
believing that the dawn is coming, but we hold on to something too. We hope. We
wait, we anticipate, because we know there is something for which we are
waiting, for which we are anticipating. And it is not just the newest gadget
under the tree, it is not simply to see the joy on a child’s face when she gets
exactly what she wants, it not even the joy of family like every Hallmark movie
wants us to believe. We are waiting for something bigger, something better,
something to which all the other waitings point us, something of which we see
shadows and distorted reflections in even the over commercialized, secular
season which has grown up around the Christian seasons of Advent and Christmas.
We wait for salvation, for redemption, for a dawn that marks a bright and
joyous day to come. We wait for Christ.
During
Advent we are all play acting, joining together with the children waiting for
Christmas to come, remembering what it was like, the wonder, the hope, the
anticipation, the expectation, experience it all again. We all come together and
enter into a grand Advent play in which we are portraying the people of Israel in
the BC darkness; awaiting the coming messiah, looking to God to send the One
who will bring redemption and salvation, the one who will set all things right,
uphold the righteous, cast out the unrighteous, bring justice with mercy, judgment
and forgiveness. We pretend that we are a part of a pre-Christ world waiting,
and not even exactly sure what for what or for whom we are waiting. We hold our
breath along with all creation wondering when, and how long our wait must be. We
are pretending to be children waiting for Christmas, play acting at being the
people of the earth awaiting the coming of the Messiah. We make believe, we
immerse ourselves in the story so that we can remember, remember who we are and
what we are doing. We are the people of God waiting for God, knowing God will
act, knowing that God will make all things right. We are waiting for Christ to
come again, to bring the kingdom of God to completion. We wait as ones in the
middle of the story, who know how the story will end, making it through the
darkest middle part of the story, because we know that in the end right defeats
wrong, goodness will win and God’s will be forever be done on earth as it is in
Heaven. And so we wait and hope for that, knowing that just as surely as the
sun always rises, that day will come as well. And we wait.
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