Today’s Scripture Reading (February
8, 2014): Habakkuk 3
Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano once wrote that
“Utopia lies at the horizon. When I
draw nearer by two steps, it retreats two steps. If I proceed ten steps
forward, it swiftly slips ten steps ahead. No matter how far I go, I can never
reach it. What, then, is the purpose of utopia? It is to cause us to advance.”
Utopia is like the pot of gold at
the end of rainbow. As much as we try to get to the rainbow’s end – it simply
recedes farther away from us. The attempt to reach Utopia – or our Shangri-La –
is a fool’s errand because we will never get there. And yet, we are made to try
and chase it down. Utopia only exists to cause us to move forward.
And that was exactly where
Habakkuk found himself. He had made a plea to God himself that the penalty that
was coming to Israel could somehow be avoided – that Israel could be delivered.
And God’s response to the prophet was that, for this moment, Israel’s
deliverance was just not possible. Everything was already in place for the
nation’s downfall. In this moment, Habakkuk’s prayer could not be granted. It
was not the answer that Habakkuk wanted to hear.
So the prophet describes
exactly how he was feeling in this moment of God’s “no.” His heart pounded, his
lips quivered and his legs shook; for the prophet it felt as if death itself
had entered into the very core of his being. It was that moment of intense
disappointment that we all experience at various points in our life – moments
that, when we are in disappointment’s grip, we are unsure that we will be able
to live to see the other side. It is the moments of our lives when we come
questioning to God – why is it that you would allow this? Where is my Utopia?
Yet Habakkuk also comes to
the conclusion that he will wait. God’s anger was only for the moment.
Deliverance might not come on Habakkuk’s timetable, but it would come. The God
of Israel would not allow his children to suffer forever. Habakkuk’s decision
is that he will put one foot in front of the other and begin to chase down the
time of God’s deliverance – and the Israel’s Utopia. And although that time of
Israel’s deliverance may not come in the prophet’s lifetime, still this idea of
Utopia would cause him, and his brothers and sisters to move forward. In that
day, those responsible for holding his nation down would stumble and fall, and
God would allow Israel once more to be restored. And the hope was that if they
had been faithful to God during the times of defeat and oppression, they would
remember to serve their God in the joyful time of deliverance – in that time when
Utopia would finally move closer to the people of God than just a dream that
existed on the horizon.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Jeremiah 1
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