How long, O Lord? And why the silence is not the answer you think it is.

Greetings,

Last week I wrote about a man who fights and claws and builds idols when life falls apart. This week I want to camp with a man I suspect many of us know well, perhaps more than we care to admit.

He has stopped fighting. He has, in his head and even in his heart, reconciled himself to the sovereignty of God. He believes God is in control. He believes God has a purpose. He has prayed. He has been faithful. He has done what God asked.

And he is still waiting. Still in the hard thing. Still without an answer. Still without the peace he was told should follow surrender.

That man has a name in Scripture. His name is Habakkuk.

Habakkuk opens his short book with a complaint. How long, O Lord, must I call for help, and you do not listen? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? The violence, the destruction, the strife, it is everywhere around him and God appears to be doing nothing. The silence of God in the face of evil is Habakkuk’s crisis. And he does not dress it up or soften it. He brings it to God exactly as it is.

We do not have to look far to recognise his world. The moral decay, the injustice, the sins of others spilling into lives around us. The man who prays and asks how long, and hears nothing back. That is the world we are living in today. It is no different from Habakkuk’s.

Habakkuk does not abandon his faith even as the circumstances remain unchanged. He takes his confusion directly to God. Even in its weakness, his faith is still present, a faith that knows there is nowhere else to go.

God does answer. And the answer is not what Habakkuk expects. God tells him he is about to raise up the Babylonians, a ruthless and impetuous nation, to carry out judgment on Judah. The very thing Habakkuk has been crying out about is about to get significantly worse before it gets better. And the instrument God is going to use is more ungodly than the problem Habakkuk has been complaining about.

Habakkuk’s response is honest. He goes back to God with another question. How can you, who are of purer eyes than to see evil, use this nation as your instrument? The righteous will suffer. The wicked will prosper. Where is the justice in that?

God responds. And what he says first reorients everything: the righteous shall live by his faith. Then God gives him a vision of himself, his glory, his sovereignty, his absolute control over all of history. The answers Habakkuk wanted never come. What comes instead is a bigger God.

The writer of Hebrews describes faith as the evidence of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Habakkuk has something the circumstances cannot take from him, a conviction about who God is. And that conviction is enough to stand on.

One of the things that makes Habakkuk’s trust possible is what he knows about the character of God. Lamentations 3:31-33 says it plainly. He will not cast off forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men. He never wastes pain, and his purposes are always for his glory and our good. The pain is purposeful, intentional, and never the last thing God does.

Habakkuk does not get resolved circumstances. He does not get a timeline or a guarantee that the suffering will be brief. What he gets is a bigger view of God. And that bigger view changes everything.

By the end of the book, standing in the same circumstances he began with, nothing has changed externally, Habakkuk writes one of the most extraordinary declarations of trust in all of Scripture. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Saviour.

Yet. That word carries the whole weight of the book.

It is worth understanding what that yet represents. Resignation says I have no other option. Reluctant submission grits the teeth and accepts what cannot be changed. Habakkuk’s yet is acceptance in the deepest sense, a willingness that comes from genuine trust. An attitude that says I believe God loves me and knows what is best, even in this. That kind of acceptance is one of the most active and costly choices a man can make.

I want to say something from my own experience. There are times we choose wrongly, sinful choices that take us off the path. But there are also times we pursue something prayerfully, wisely, faithfully, and it still does not work out. God is always in it. He is always teaching something, always working something, always moving toward his purpose, even when the outcome looks nothing like what we prayed for.

Our trust in God must be based not on our own experiences, nor on the experiences of others, but on what God has told us about himself in his Word. Habakkuk is not trusting God because he has seen how it all works out. He is trusting God because he has seen who God is. And who God is does not change when the fig tree stops budding.

Scripture does not promise relief before the trial deepens. The love of many will grow cold. Perilous times will come. Habakkuk’s trust is the same trust we are called to, that the better may not come in our lifetime, and that the promises of God may be fulfilled not in what we see but in what we are moving toward. It might get worse before it gets better. It might not. But his promises will be fulfilled. And we will see the goodness of God, whether in this world or in the life to come.

Where are you currently waiting for God to change the circumstances, and what would change if you sought a bigger view of him instead?