This is the message that the
prophet Habakkuk received in a vision. How long,
O Lord, must I call for help? But
you do not listen! “Violence is
everywhere!” I cry, but you do not come to save. Must I forever see
these evil deeds? Why must I watch all
this misery? Wherever I look, I see
destruction and violence. I am
surrounded by people who love to argue and fight. The law has become
paralyzed, and there is no justice in the courts. The wicked far outnumber the righteous, so
that justice has become perverted.
The Lord replied, “Look
around at the nations; look and be amazed! For I am doing something in your own
day, something you wouldn’t believe even if someone told you about it. I
am raising up the Babylonians, a cruel and violent people. They will march across the world and conquer
other lands. They are notorious for their
cruelty and do whatever they like. Their horses are swifter than
cheetahs and fiercer than wolves at dusk.
Their charioteers charge from far away.
Like eagles, they swoop down to devour their prey. “On
they come, all bent on violence. Their
hordes advance like a desert wind, sweeping captives ahead of them like sand. They
scoff at kings and princes and scorn all their fortresses. They simply pile ramps of earth against their
walls and capture them! They sweep past like the wind and
are gone. But they are deeply guilty, for
their own strength is their god.”
O Lord my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal—surely you do not plan to wipe us out? O Lord, our Rock, you have sent these Babylonians to correct us, to punish us for our many sins. But you are pure and cannot stand the sight of evil. Will you wink at their treachery? Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they?
Habakkuk 1:1-13
Habakkuk’s conversation with the Lord was Israel’s
version of Why do bad things
happen to good people? Although the
prophet had eyes, and could see the myriad of ways God’s people had forfeited
any right to being called God’s people, he still had trouble getting his mind
around why God would use such a vile nation as Babylon to carry out His
punishment.
In the daylight of hindsight, I’m certain Jewish
scholars have been able to gain perspective, that God allows us to choose our
“fate” because of free will. My mother
was an easy-going sort, hesitant to mete out harshness of any kind. One of her strong suits was patience. Her youngest child, Russell, did not get that
gene. Often, when my youthful
audaciousness devised plans that were well beyond caution, Mom would simply
say: No…I don’t think so. To be fair, Mom
would always give me the rundown on how dangerous the consequences might prove,
but Russell would whine and try to reason with her, until even that
sweet-natured patience wore thin.
Eventually she would say: Do what you want.
In my own perspective, informed by decades of hindsight and well-earned heartaches, the wisdom of Mom’s objections to my flawed and selfish plans, strikes me as mostly Godly wisdom and righteousness. She marched to a higher bar of behavior than her self-centered son. The much published saying of Edmund Burke: The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing, is largely true, but not exclusively-so. Evil can triumph when so-called good people fail to see the handwriting on the wall about our responsibility to live-up to the name we claim. God will not be mocked.
For You Today
The “fate” of America is still in the balance; our national behavior will
decide if evil will triumph, or if we will be one nation under God.
There
are about 2,000 devotional posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions library. To dig deeper on today’s topic, explore some
of these:
What Flash Saw and Nervous Kings
[1] Images: Pixabay.com Unless noted, Scripture quoted from The New Living Translation©
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