Cultivating Hope in the Season of Advent: Lessons from Habakkuk

By Rev. Kristen Yates

When I was a child, I was a bit of a worry wart, and I don’t really even know why this was, but one of the things that I worried about was getting lost during our family travels. Now, one of the things to know about my family is that we traveled all the time, and we traveled by car.  Multiple times a year, we traveled from NJ to VA, where my grandparents lived. Additionally, most years, we also traveled to SC and FL for vacation.  So we pretty much knew our way to these places, and we generally stopped in the same rest stops along the way, so there wasn’t actually much chance of getting lost.

On occasion, however, we would take some detours for whatever reason – because we needed gas at the last minute or wanted to try a new restaurant or visit some historic site or something like that.  Most of the times, these detours went without a hitch, but every once in a while, we would find ourselves in an unfamiliar place and my dad, who was the main navigator, wouldn’t be really sure about where we were – and keep in mind, this was in the days before GPS.  Well, when this happened, I would start to freak out.

All of sudden I would start moaning, “We’re lost, we’re lost” and in my little mind, I would really fear that we wouldn’t be able to find our way back and would somehow get stuck in rural North Carolina or Georgia or wherever we were, which was apparently a calamity in my mind.

Now not surprisingly, we would eventually find our way back to where we needed to be, but for those 10-20 minutes when we were off the beaten track, I was genuinely stressed out.

Now, apparently, I freaked out like this enough times over the years that it became a bit of a joke in my family.  Many years into the future, my dad would tease me.  We would be driving on a road we knew and he would turn to me with a twinkle in his eye and say “Kristen, I think we are lost”, which of course I knew wasn’t true because I knew exactly where we were.  He was just being a tease.

But here is the thing: even if we had truly found ourselves in a situation where we were lost all those years later, I would no longer have worried.  You see, over the years, as my family continued to travel, I witnessed my dad pulling through over and over again on those occasions when we did get sidetracked from our known route.

Every time, while I stressed out, he remained calm, and eventually he figured out the way to get us to our destination.  He always kept us safe and he kept us from the calamity it would have been to be stuck forever in rural, no-name USA.  My dad did this over and over again, so by the time I was a teenager, I trusted him. I knew that he was capable and faithful. I just had to look to the past – to remember his character and to remember what he had done many times before to know what he would do in the present. I was in good hands.

So friends, for the past couple of weeks, we have been diving into the book of Habakkuk as we have journeyed through the season of Advent together, and as we have done so, we have seen that like me as child when I was lost on a family trip, Habakkuk found himself in a precarious situation that caused him great angst. Of course, the situation he found himself in was far worse that what I experienced as a child and the person he lamented to with not his earthy father but his heavenly father, but like me who eventually came to trust my dad, Habakkuk also eventually came to trust God in his unchartered territory.

He did this by listening to God and by reflecting on God’s character and past deeds, and just like I had done with my own father, Habakkuk gradually learned to trust God in the midst of difficult and perplexing, and this trust is evident in today’s Scripture reading, which is a prayer that Habbakuk wrote.

So we are going into dig a bit into this prayer today, but before we do that, let us briefly review what’s been going on in the entire book of Habakkuk to bring this prayer into proper context.

So from the start of his book, this book has been a dialogue between Habakkuk and God as Habakkuk looked upon the state of Judah and wondered where God was.

The book started out with Habakkuk issuing a complaint to God about how corrupt and unjust the Kingdom of Judah had become, and Habakkuk wondered why God had not done anything about it.  God then answered Habakkuk and said that He actually was doing something, and that Babylon would soon conquer Judah.

This of course was not really the answer that Habakkuk was looking for and so he issued a second complaint to God that Babylon was even more corrupt and more unjust than Judah. How could God, who cannot even look upon evil and injustice, allow this to happen?

And then God answered again. God essentially said, don’t worry and he called Habakkuk to live by faith.  God would not allow Babylon to go on forever with its wicked and unjust ways. God saw Babylon’s unjust economic practices, it’s irresponsible leadership, it captivity and slave labor, and its idolatry, and He pronounced woes upon Babylon for these practices.  Habakkuk could be absolutely assured that at an appointed time. God would bring down Babylon, just as He would bring down all Kingdoms and all nations who thrive on injustice.

Habakkuk heard this and he took God’s promise to heart, and in response to what God would do to overcome Babylon, he wrote a prayer, and so let us dig into this prayer a little more now.

This prayer, which is poetic and rich imagery, is essentially divided into 3 parts. In the first part, Habakkuk asked God’s to revive His deeds of old and to remember mercy even in His wrath.

In the second part, Habakkuk celebrated God’s character and God’s past victories on behalf of His people.   This included remembering God’s dominion over chaotic waters in the creation of the world, remembering God causing the sun to stand still for Joshua, remembering God’s presence at Mount Sinai at the giving of the Law, and of course remembering the Exodus, when God triumphed over Pharaoh and delivered His people – an event that was so awesome and fearsome that it made Habakkuk tremble even 100s of years later.

In the third part, Habakkuk reaffirmed that he would wait patiently for the day of justice and salvation to come – that day when a New Exodus would happen when Babylon and all unjust nations that would follow it would be taken down just as Pharaoh had been taken down, and finally the People of God would live in peace and freedom.  Until that day arrived, however, Habakkuk, would stand in a posture of hope and trust in the Lord as he waited.

Now as we reflect on this passage from today, I want us to notice two things.  The first is this:  you may have noticed as we read the passage today that Habakkuk didn’t mince words as he prayed.  The words he used to describe God’s past victories and to look forward to God’s future victories did not portray a tame God.   Habakkuk understood that God truly is a righteous judge who hates injustice and when He comes against it, it is fearsome situation.

Some of the language we heard in this passage includes nations shaking, mountains writhing, hills sinking, waters raging, and the earth splitting.   Now, if this imagery doesn’t cause a little fear to arise in our hearts, it should.  For God will thresh all nations, systems, and people who are involved in injustice in any way.  This is great news for the oppressed but bad news for the oppressor.

The second thing I want us to notice is this:  I already mentioned this before, but it is a good point to repeat: Habakkuk was eventually able to find his sense of hope and trust in the Lord because of his reflections on God’s character and God past actions.  Though the situation with Judah and Babylon did not make any sense to him, he was nevertheless able to trust in God, to know that he was in good hands and that God would act in his own timing.

So the big question that springs up in my mind as I hear all this is: “While this is interesting, how does this ancient prayer relate to us?”  Well, the Prayer of Habakkuk actually has a lot to say to us.  Habakkuk’s situation isn’t really all that different than ours. We too live in a broken world where things are going wrong all around us and even within us.  We too have to wait for the world to change, knowing that God has promised to renew and restore this world, but not knowing when he will do it or how he will do it, and also not understanding why God allows injustice to occur in the meantime.  We can definitely relate to Habakkuk, and I think there are three main takeaways from today’s prayer for each of us to consider.

The first takeawayis that God is a God of Justice and there is going to be a reckoning in the future, and this is ultimately good news.

The second takeaway is that in order to help us build our trust muscle in God, we should find ways to regularly remember God’s story and to remember how God has personally shown his care to each one of us in the past.

The third takeaway is that God calls each one of us to find hope, gratitude, and joy in the mist of our waiting for the world to change.

So let me flesh out each one of these very briefly.

So for the first takeaway, Habakkuk made it clear that God hates injustice and will defeat it. There will be a reckoning.  This is bad news for some and good news for others.

Let’s start with the bad news.  Now, this means that if any of us are linked to oppression, injustice, idolatry, or sin in any way, we better look out for God, and friends based on what I know alone about modern-day human trafficking, unfortunately, we are almost all linked to a lesser or greater degree to these things, even if we are completely unaware of how.

Well, what we can know is that God is going to come and defeat these things, and as he does so, this may feel painful to those of us who benefit from these injustices and oppressions.  It may not initially feel like good news as he strips these things away from us or as we make our own sacrifices in our consumption and habits to foster a more just world.   It may feel like mountains crumbling and waters raging around us or a thick skin being torn off us.  However, if we are believers in Christ, we need not fear – this temporary pain is meant to form us and to mold us into true human beings as God originally intended, humans in the likeness of Jesus himself.

I personally love that imagery in The Chronicles of Narnia, when the boy Eustis who has turned into a dragon let Aslan, the Christ figure in the Chronicles, tear off his layers of skin so he might be a boy again.

As Aslan did so, Eustis said, “The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. . . . “

And then Eustis was once again a boy.

Well friends, we too may just have to let several layers of dragon skin be torn off of us so we can be how God intended us to be, so we can love God and neighbor to the best of our abilities.  So the question I have to ask us is: are there ways that we knowingly or unknowingly participate in injustice, idolatry, and sin and are there ways for us to pull away from that?  It would be good for us to take some time in the near future to reflect on this. One way or the other, God will bring us through a refining process, but that refining process is ultimately good news.

And now for some more good news.  The good news is this: if we find ourselves oppressed in any way,God is going to defeat those things that are crushing us, drowning us, stripping us of our dignity and our ability to live abundant lives.   When Jesus returns to make all things new at the end of time, He will be the champion we have been waiting for, and we will be fully restored and renewed.

So friends, I ask us.  What are the mountains of injustice in our lives that are crushing us or are crushing our family, friends, and neighbors?  What are the seas of injustice that are enveloping us and drowning us?   These things, whatever they are, may feel overwhelming to us at this time, but we can absolutely know that God is going to topple those mountains and He is going to part those seas.  We can absolutely trust that.

In His time, God is going to break all cycles of injustice.  God is going to invert all evil, just as he did with the crucifixion – turning the most horrible event in the world into the most redemptive, life-giving event.  God will somehow redeem all those things that were intended to do us harm.  And when this happens, the people of God will live in freedom and peace and wholeness, just as God intended it to be.   This is wonderful news, so let us embrace this news.

So that is the first takeaway, and now for the second.

The second takeaway is that in order foster our trust in the Lord as we wait in a broken world, we should find ways to regularly remember God’s story and to remember how God has personally shown his care to each one of us in the past.

Jesus promises us to come back and to make all things new.  We can absolutely trust that, but until He comes back, we must contend with the brokenness that is all around us and that is within us, and frankly that can sometimes get discouraging.  We can lose hope.  We can forget who God is.  And that is exactly why we need to remember who God is and to rehearse his deeds just as Habakkuk did.  We of course do that by regularly reading Scripture, but we can do that in other ways as well.

• For example, entering into the seasons of the Christian Calendar, which yearly leads us through waiting for Jesus the Messiah and then pondering his birth, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, and his calling of the church can help us to remember.

• Participating weekly in the Eucharist, Communion, which both looks backwards to Jesus’ death and resurrection as well as looks forward to the feast of the Lamb at the Kingdom of God, can help us remember.

• Engaging in activities like the Advent Jesse tree, which walks us through the family tree of Jesus during the season of Advent and shows us God’s faithfulness to Jesus’ ancestors, can help us to remember.

• And then there are the more personal stories we can remember. Each of us has stories of how God has shown his love, mercy, grace, and provision. Making a habit in our regular devotions of recalling these God moments in our lives can help us to remember.

So friends, let us cultivate practices in our lives that help us to remember God’s faithfulness, justice, grace, and love; these practices will serve us well as we wait for the world to change.

And that brings us to our third and final takeaway – we are to cultivate hope, joy, and gratitude in the midst of our waiting.  This takeaway is related to the second one, for as we engage in practices of remembering God’s character and God past deeds, we can find hope and joy even in the midst of difficult situations.  As we remember who God is, we can begin to see our current circumstances in a new light – not that our circumstances all of sudden become less difficult, but we can see how God is nevertheless at work in our midst, how God is showing us his love, and how God is indeed redeeming and transforming those things that were meant to do us harm and using them for good.

Friends, if you haven’t made this a practice yet in your life, I highly recommend you to start finding daily examples of what God is doing all around you and to express thankfulness for those things, no matter how miniscule or large they be.  Especially if you have a tendency to see life situations with a glass half empty attitude, as I unfortunately am prone to do, it is important to take notice of all the things for which you can be thankful and when you do so and add all those things up, you will see just how present God is with you, even as you wait.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned a woman named Betsie Ten Boom who was a Christian woman who was imprisoned by the Nazis in World War II because she and her family had sheltered Jews.  Well Betsie was an absolutely beautiful person who regularly prayed for enemies, and not only that, but she thanked God for the ways that God was blessing her.  And one of the ways, she specifically thanked God while she was imprisoned was by thanking him for the flees that infested her part of the prison.

When she told her sister Corrie she wanted to thank God for the flees, her sister thought she was crazy, but Betsie found herself justified some time later when she and Corrie found out why the guards never came into their space, which allowed them to do daily Bible study and prayer with the women who were with them, a practice that was a great blessing to all.  Well, why didn’t the guards come and stop the Bible study?  Because of the flees.  So even as terrible as the flee infestation was, Betsie saw how God used that for the ultimate good of the women imprisoned with them, and she was thankful.  Was it how God ultimately wanted it to be?  No, absolutely not, but in the meantime, he used a bad situation for good.

So friends, as we wait for the world to change, there are always things around us, no matter how difficult the circumstance are, that can awaken gratefulness within us.  Let us be on the lookout for these things.  Let us find them, and then remember how God has acted in the past, give thanks, and then allow God to fill our hearts with the true hope and joy that only God can bring as we truthfully come before him with all our hopes, our fears, our questions, our laments, and our thanksgivings.  Let us do this as we wait for the God of justice, peace, and wholeness to bring renewal and restoration to our world.  For He will do it, friends.  This future renewal will come, and this future renewal that Jesus will bring is the source of true hope and joy in this season of Advent.  Amen.