Have you ever been in a situation where God has opened your eyes to what is going on around you, and maybe even what is being done to you, and the absolute evil and wickedness that it actually is? But He hasn’t yet opened His hand to work?
I have.
Habakkuk was.
And we ask the same question. Why would you open my eyes to then do nothing? How does that make You good? How does that make You faithful?
In your lifetime, you will ask these questions (if you’re a believer). And some people will say “how dare you question God’s character?” “You just need to trust Him more”.
Those people haven’t been fully aware and fully powerless yet.
I have come to have a different outlook on these questions, now. Covenant questions, if you will.
Habakkuk isn’t asking these questions because of a lack of faith. “How long?” is the question of someone who expects God to act and to care. Someone who knows that God can and will deliver His people. A covenant question.
But, also, of someone who is experiencing the anguish, grief, and exhaustion of God not intervening. If you let me see it, why won’t You fix it?
Someone who, just like you and I, is living in the now but not yet.
These first few verses of Habakkuk remind me of a horse being asked to stand when it either knows or believes danger is nearby. Ears up. Body coiled. Every instinct they have says “move”. But the trainer has asked them to wait. To trust without explanation. So they stand, maybe even trembling, asking the same thing we do “I see the danger, why won’t you let me move?”
The questions we ask in the stillness aren’t faithlessness, it’s obedience under protest.
As we’ll see later, God invites us into waiting. He reveals that justice is more complex than immediate relief. And that He is acting… we just may not like how.
Centered Path Equine 