Today's Scripture Reading (July 4, 2026): Habakkuk 3
In
the days when my wife and I were planning our wedding, I was a university
student, and she was working in a nursing home. I probably don't have to tell
you that money was tight. And so our "Honeymoon" would basically be
our drive back from my wife's island childhood home, where we would be married,
to the city where I was attending university and she was working in a nursing
home, a journey of just over 700 km (450 miles). We had a tourist book of
hotels and motels on the Island, and we started searching it for a nice place
to stay on our wedding night. We came upon a place not far from the wedding
site and close to the ferry we would need to take when we left the Island; it
sounded perfect. It was a small place, only a dozen or so rooms, right on the ocean
with a great view. And so, months before the proposed wedding date, we booked a
room for a couple of nights after the wedding.
When
we got to the Island, a few days before the wedding, we had a fairly rude
awakening. The place was a dump, and that is probably being generous. The only
thing that seemed to be true to the advertisement was that it was small and on
the ocean. There was a much nicer place across the street, but it was totally
booked. However, I left my name with the owner, who promised to phone us if he
had any cancellations. Luckily, a couple of days later, he called to say they
had a cancellation and that my bride and I had a new place to stay before we
started our journey home.
Today,
we would go online and look for reviews of the place, which might give us a
more honest evaluation of the hotel. After all, we know that the internet never
lies. (Can you hear my sarcasm?) Maybe an online review would have helped, but
we might have still fallen for the scam.
This
section of Habakkuk's prayer feels a bit like an online review. Habakkuk begins
to recount all the ways God had acted in the past. These are the things that
you have done. It was a reminder of God's history to the people. Unlike my book
of hotel reviews, the hope was that, as people remember these stories passed
down from generation to generation, they would know this is what God has done
in the past. And, if the past is prologue, if everything that has happened up
until now informs our present, then when we need God to move, the way he moved
in the past reassures us that He can move again. If God was able to do this in
the past, we know that you will do it again.
Nothing
has changed. God is still the one we can trust. We, too, know the stories, both
those found in the Bible and those we have experienced in our own lives. And
because we know what God has done in the past, we know that He can meet our
needs in the present. We have seen God move and know what he can do. As a
result, we can put our trust in Him.
Tomorrow's
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 11
Happy
Independence Day!
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