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. (Habakkuk 3:17-18)
Today’s passage doesn’t discuss thankfulness. It goes farther. We’re not told to be thankful when everything goes wrong, we’re told to be joyful. Keeping in mind that joy is a deep sense of being cared for by someone who is capable of doing so – not giddy happiness – may help, but when there’s nothing? Most of us tend to think of basic food and shelter is the definition of being cared for. How could anyone think that we’re being cared for if we are homeless and starving. If a child were being treated that way, CPS would take the child from the parents, and most of us would say that CPS was right to do so. But when we’re talking about parents caring for children, we’re talking about human beings. Human parents are very limited in what they can do for children. God is not so limited.
The God who can speak the whole universe into existence and can raise the dead doesn’t need figs, grapes, olives, sheep, or cattle to take care of us. He doesn’t even need for us to be alive for Him to be able to take care of us. This isn’t to suggest that we should seek this situation. To be without these things is not an ideal for us. But the rejoicing in the Lord and the joyfulness in God our Savior in this or any other circumstance is the ideal.
I must admit – and I’m
sure that I’m not alone – that I tend to consider the circumstances as far too
powerful. They are more powerful than I am, and whether I get the idea that God
has to cope with the circumstances or that God has imposed the circumstances on
me (pitiful, poor, little me,) I’m making the circumstance out to be more
powerful than God, or God less good. Neither option involves our thinking of
God as God, and that is what today’s passage is really all about.
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