Wait For It

Habakkuk 2:3  "For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie.  If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay."

I received an e-mail from an acquaintance the other day and noticed she used this verse as her signature line.  It made me think.

The prophet Habakkuk explores a question that crosses all of our minds on occasion: why do the righteous suffer while evil-doers seem to prosper?  As he puts it in his petition to God, "Why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?"  Certainly, Habakkuk is far from alone in the history of the world in asking God such a question.

So God tells Habakkuk to write down the vision he is about to receive and to share it, and then God guarantees the validity of the vision.  God basically goes on to say that the proud and the evil will be laid low, but this one verse reminds us that it will all take place in God's time.

Habakkuk's theme is justice delayed.  There is something in human nature that yearns for fairness, for justice.  Even little children, almost instinctively, understand when they or others are not being treated fairly.  They can grasp the concept of injustice, even if they cannot place a name on it.  Adulthood does not change that; we want things to be right and fair, and when they aren't, something deep within us is stirred.  Being a Christian does not change this instinct.  Indeed, it may even heighten our desire for fairness and, more specifically, for justice.  Yet what is justice but the desire for vindication?  We want assurance that we are in the right, assurance that evil will not triumph, assurance that the scales aren't rigged. 

Job is an excellent example of the desire for justice.  Left in misery and disgrace for no apparent reason, Job cries out for God to set things right.  His friends insist he has surely sinned, for why else would he be suffering except as a result of God's justice?  Yet Job knows he is an innocent man, and he must rely on God to prove it.  "I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth." (19:25)  And in Revelation we see that even in the heavenly realms this yearning is not erased, and not even assuaged:

When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained. They called out in a loud voice, “How long, Sovereign Lord, holy and true, until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood?” Then each of them was given a white robe, and they were told to wait a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and brothers who were to be killed as they had been was completed. (6: 9-11)

Like Job, like Habakkuk, like the martyrs, we call out to God for justice.  God's reaction to our need is twofold.  First, it is to reassure us that justice will come.  Second, it is to relieve us of the burden altogether.  "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," says Romans 12: 19.  Habakkuk comes to God with the question, when will you give the evil what they deserve?  God reassures him that the time is coming soon.  But further, the New Testament teaches us that we need not concern ourselves with the question of revenge.  It does not belong to us; it is not our job.  It is not our burden.

But there seems to be even more to this single verse as well, a larger, fuller promise. "The vision awaits its appointed time."  If this vision, given by God, is true and ensured, so too are all the visions given by God, to prophets, to patriarchs, and indeed to each of us.  Each time we feel the Spirit touch us with a promise, we can know with full confidence that God will act.  His promises never fail.  Remember this beautiful assurance from Joshua 21:45 -- "Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass."  Over the years I've had those moments when a fervent prayer was answered quietly with a promise, a promise that in the end it would be alright, that the answers would come, that God was moving.  These "visions" are as full of truth, as inviolable, as any vision given by God to a great Hebrew prophet.  You, I, Habakkuk, Job, Isaiah, Elijah, Daniel, Moses, Abraham...Peter, Paul, John...we all share the same perfect, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent God.  When God speaks, when the still, soft voice comes, no matter who we are, no matter what our place, no matter what our problem, the promise is the same -- God will fulfill his word, and the vision will hold true, in God's time.  Just wait for it.