December 09, 2011

Yet I Will Rejoice


I' finishing up my one year journey through the Bible. I was reading in Habakkuk 3 this week. This verse stood out to me:

"Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's; he makes me tread on my high places." (Habakkuk 3:18, 19 ESV)

To really get what he is saying, it helps to go back and read verse 17:

"Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herds in the stalls."

Habakkuk paints this picture of despair. Nothing is going right. There is famine, the crops are failing, and the livestock has all disappeared. It's a desperate situation. Hope seems to have vanished. People are going to starve. It would be easy in this scenario to start crying out to God "Why God, are you being so mean to us? Why won't you provide the way You used to? Why can't things be the way they used to be? Why can't you make it better?"

I feel that way...a lot lately. Where's God when things seem to be falling apart? Look around - we all have our own little personal problems. Sickness, finances, relationships. Why do bad things seem to happen? We all could whine and complain about so many things that don't seem to be going our way. I sure can think of a lot of things I would change if I could.

But Habakkuk, instead of complaining, proclaims that he will rejoice in the Lord. Even in the midst of trials. Even in the midst of crisis. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. Yet. Even though humanly I have every reason to give up hope and  complain, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy - not sadness, not hopelessness, not misery - but joy in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord, is my strength.

I pray that you will pause today, in the midst of your crisis, whatever it might be, and simply rejoice in the Lord. Take joy in the God of your salvation.

2 comments:

seashellparker said...

amen :)

Sara G said...

Amen! Also reminded by Paul to always rejoice, in everything give thanks!

Thank you.