Thoughts on the Daily Office

I was reading in Habakkuk (a book we all frequent I'm sure) today, chapter 3, verse 17-18, and thinking of the recent events of this weekend. Let me share the passage with you first, and then I'll share my thoughts on it.

Though the fig tree does not bud/and there are no grapes on the vines,/though the olive crop fails/and the fields produce no food,/though there are no sheep in the pen/and no cattle in the stalls,/yet I will rejoice in the LORD,/I will be joyful in God my Savior.

Yet. Yet. Faith in God's sovereign control is best described by this word yet. Habakkuk is crying out over the destruction that he is witnessing all around him. Desolation. Barrenness. Ruin. He looks at it in all of its raw reality, all of its naked destruction, and can proclaim loudly "yet."

Maybe faith is more simple than we thought. Maybe faith is being able to look at the circumstances of life--the cancer, the heartache, the confusion, the betrayal, the pain, the death--look them right in the eye and scream out at the top of you lungs, "Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior," believing that he can and does still save those who cry out to him.

shalom, matt