28
28 November, Habakkuk
Reflection by Sam Fitzgerald
I will stand at my watch-post,
and station myself on the rampart;
I will keep watch to see what he will say to me,
and what he will answer concerning my complaint.
Then the Lord answered me and said:
Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so that a runner may read it.
For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
it speaks of the end, and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
it will surely come, it will not delay.
Look at the proud!
Their spirit is not right in them,
but the righteous live by their faith.
Habakkuk 2.1-4
Nation has risen against nation, the innocent lie trampled underfoot. The necessities of life are scarce for the many while a lucky few hoard the world’s wealth. Any sign of divine justice is painfully absent. Peace, security and safety are distant memories. Hope is at its end. Amidst all this, the prophet stations himself on the tower, watching for the first distant glimpse of God. The prophet demands some explanation for the horrors God has allowed to take place, demands divine retribution and rescue. Most of all, he yearns for the reassurance of God’s presence.
Eventually, God responds with a simple message: hold on.
In the face of existential threat, this can seem rather glib. Why should we accept a deferral of God’s plan for us, while in the meantime unjust rulers ride roughshod over people and planet? The question of why the kingdom hasn’t come yet – the kingdom that we pray for every day – is at the heart of Habakkuk’s cry, and has continued to be asked by generations of Christians eagerly awaiting the promised second coming of Christ.
Yet God’s reply to Habakkuk, His command to be patient, is not arbitrary. Nor is the ‘appointed time’ of the vision described in chapter one, or indeed of any vision. Rather, we could see in this command a hint to look more closely at the unjust structures that oppress us and others in the present. Perhaps what seems on the surface to be a never-ending vicious cycle of violence is not as stable as it appears. The artificially puffed-up status of the enemy makes for a stark contrast to the purity and eternity of God extolled in the previous chapter; this distorted reality cannot last, and when it exhausts itself, the new creation will be ushered in. Although the vision is not for now, neither will it delay.
In this context, the call to patience and to faith is not simply an instruction to do nothing. It is an opportunity for us to begin to extricate ourselves from the doomed structures that God will put an end to, and to embody God’s righteousness in part even while we wait for its full coming in Christ. More than just providing much-needed reassurance in the present, placing our trust in God will therefore give us life for the future, as Paul quotes Habakkuk to argue in Romans 1.
The bare facts of the world in which we live remain the same. Nations are at war, people are starving, cold, displaced from their homes and stripped of dignity. But far off in the distance, the prophet spies a puff of dust on the horizon, or maybe it’s a twinkling lamp far off down the road, a distant sign that the she is not alone. Hope is rekindled.
