Habakkuk 1:12-2:4
There
have always been people who have taken advantage of turmoil and trouble to make
a fast buck.
The
Roman historian Livy recounts an example.
The Roman government underwrote losses incurred by shipowners if their
vessels were carrying arms or supplies for the Roman army. In the year 212 B.C. two men were charged
with taking old, unseaworthy ships, loading them with useless junk for cargo,
and deliberately sinking them, then filing claims under this shipwreck
law. When that had worked, they became
greedier and started claiming losses of ships that had never even been built or
launched.[1]
It
may not take a state of war to bring the rats out of the woodwork. It may only take fear of war or
terrorism. There’s a company called U.S.
Investigation Services that makes its money by doing background checks under government
contract. Two years ago, in 2011, they
became the object of an investigation by the District Attorney in Washington
for rushing their work but this year they still were assigned 700,000 background
checks that they were paid $2.45 billion to complete. As a result of the investigation, they fired
a dozen managers in their quality control division, the division president, and
their chief financial officer for cutting corners to meet monthly quotas. This was the division that gave its approval
to Aaron Alexis, who in September shot up the Navy Yard in Washington, killing
twelve people.[2]
We
don’t know much about the prophet Habakkuk, but we do know that he lived at a
time when the kingdom of Judah was on the edge of invasion or had already been
overrun, and we know that a big part of his message was outrage not only at the
invaders but also at the churlish people who were turning the chaos to their
own profit.
“O Lord, you have marked them for
judgment; and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment. Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,
and you cannot look on wrongdoing; why do you look on the treacherous, and are
silent when the wicked swallow those more righteous than they?” [Habakkuk
1:12-13]
It’s
part of the lingering question of when you can expect God to act. If we get fed up with the little bit that we
see, doesn’t God – who surely sees far more and far more clearly than we do –
also get fed up? When does he say,
“Enough of this”?
Habakkuk
decided he would get an answer. He was
like Job, who demanded that God give him his reasons for allowing suffering. Habakkuk announced
“I will stand at my watchpost, 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.” [Habakkuk 2:1]
He
stands there, figuratively, on behalf of anyone who has had those
questions.
“Why do the
wicked live on,
reach old age, and grow mighty in power?” [Job 21:7]
Why
does that happen when so many good people die young or maybe live on to old age
with lives full of trouble? Have their
lives been worth it?
The short answer is, “Yes.”
God never gives Job an answer, but
Habakkuk does get one, and God says, “Let me spell this out for you, and spell
it out in large letters.”
“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.” [Habakkuk 2:2-3]
It’s
a reminder that the God who has the wide picture also has the long view. We see and we are part of only a small
portion of history. We are here a little
while and then gone.
“Time, like an
ever-rolling stream,
Bears all who breathe
away.
They fly, forgotten
like a dream
Dies at the opening
day.”
God
is eternal. Because of that, our destiny is also eternal, and what happens to
us here, as important as it is, will not have the words “The End” written
behind it. We are judged, finally, by
our faithfulness and the spirit that is within us, and not by the externals.
“Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them,
but the righteous live by their faith.”
[Habakkuk 2:4]
That
faith is a faith in the God who has come into this world in Jesus, to be with
us through the ups and downs, and a God who is also beyond this world and frees
us from slavery to its brutal ways.
Let me finish with an observation
from Paul Tillich, who recalls the words of the book of Revelation:
“’I am
the beginning and the end.’ This is said
to us who live in the bondage of time, who have to face the end, who cannot
escape the past, who need a present to stand upon. Each of the modes of time has its particular
mystery, each of them carries its peculiar anxiety. Each of them drives us to an ultimate
question. There is one answer to these questions – the eternal. There is one
power that surpasses the all-consuming power of time – the eternal: He Who
was and is and is to come, the beginning and the end. He gives us forgiveness for what has
passed. He gives us courage for what is
to come. He gives us rest in His eternal
Presence.”[3]
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