ASLC Devotions -- Monday

Habakkuk 1:12-14
 ¹² Are you not from of old,
   O Lord my God, my Holy One?
   You shall not die.
O Lord, you have marked them for judgement;
   and you, O Rock, have established them for punishment. 
¹³ Your eyes are too pure to behold evil,
   and you cannot look on wrongdoing;
why do you look on the treacherous,
   and are silent when the wicked swallow
   those more righteous than they? 
¹⁴ You have made people like the fish of the sea,
   like crawling things that have no ruler.

Habakkuk seems like a cheeky prophet, like a prophet that got a little bit sassy with God, and somehow lived to tell about it. Some editors of modern translations, the folks who put those descriptive headings into our Bibles, have called this first chapter of Habakkuk "The Prophet's Complaint." Seems pretty accurate, especially when we read verse 13 -- why don't you say something, God, when the wicked eat up the good? Perhaps by my standards, though, we could all be considered a little bit cheeky when we wonder why God doesn't seem to speak a word to situations riddled with injustice.

There are two parts of Habakkuk's scripture that I find beautiful, however. One, the prophet brings a word to God -- a word of complaint, a word seeking justice, a word of information, a feisty word of challenge. Perhaps we sometimes shy away from being sassy with God -- we have lost the art of bringing a word to God, the art of prophetic give and take. And two, God responds. We'll hear that response tomorrow, but for today know that this is not a one-sided conversation that Habakkuk has with God -- and our conversations, our prayers, with God are not one-sided, either.

Peace,
Pastor Jenn