NOTE – I’m uploading this post-quarantine after testing negative for COVID-19 🙂
I’m writing this in the midst of a quarantine period (not my first, unfortunately) and while I feel blessed to be able to do school and work from home, I can tell you from experience that they don’t get any less stressful, scary, or isolating.
I am reminded again how unfamiliar this year has been for us as a people. COVID has, in some shape or form, taken some basic comfort from us all.
Maybe you no longer see your relatives every few weeks. My heart goes out to the grandparents who have not yet met grandchildren, and the other life changes that have happened largely without their usual audience.
We are all missing the physical, face-to-face, real interactions with our coworkers, pastors, friends, therapists, neighbors, relatives.
If you haven’t gotten the gist yet – we are all uncomfortable!
Discomfort causes us to withdraw and cling to anything that feels stable. We grasp for straws like binge-watching and comfort foods and hours of mindless scrolling.
This is how I’ve spent a lot of this year, doing things to make me forget the terrifying world around me.
But we were not meant to cope or to scrape by!!!
I’ve been reading through the minor prophets of the bible lately in my mornings, and I read Habakkuk 3 this morning, which says this in verse 17:
“Though the fig tree should not blossom
and there be no fruit on the vines,
Though the yield of the olive should fail
and though the fields produce no food,
Though the flock should be cut off from the fold
and there be no cattle in the stalls,
Habakkuk 3:17
Now I know most of us aren’t farmers or cattle ranchers, but a double or triple read through can give us just a hint at the desolation the prophet Habakkuk is describing here.
In this book, Habakkuk is prophesying the inevitable fall of Judah into the hands of Babylon, which will lead to the lack of resources being described here. There’s a reason the majority of these versers are bleak; He knew these times were looming for Judah, an imperfect nation who had once again failed to worship, honor, and obey God.
We no longer live under the law like Israel, meaning that the tumultuous world we’re all coping and numbing our way through is not a direct payment or punishment for evil, but rather a result of the fallen nature of our world. We naturally stray, we seek to gratify our own desires, we struggle to look past ourselves and our own problems.
Habakkuk and the nation of Judah were probably doing the same thing I too often do – wallowing and complaining about our reality.
But Habakkuk ends his book on a different note:
“Yet I will exult in the Lord,
I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
The Lord God is my strength,
and He has made my feet like hinds’ feet,
and makes me walk on my high places.”
Habakkuk 3:18-19
I don’t know what particular part of our world is causing you anxiety or discomfort today, but we can find comfort today in that we are not the first ones to feel this way, and Habakkuk gives us a different response today.
We can exult. We can rejoice. God is your salvation! He is your strength!
We are broken and still broken and having the opposite response of these verses, yet Jesus still loved us and still chose to die on the cross, paying the debt for our sins that we never could. Because of this salvation, we can have joy in something sure, something permanent, something that not even a pandemic or an elected official can shake.
I was confused about the term “hinds’ feet”, so I looked at a commentary. Different versions say “deer’s feet”, and Enduring Word describes it like this:
“Habakkuk thought of the deer running about on the high hills, never losing a step and never failing. More than that, the deer positively dance and leap on the hills – they are full of life and joy. So the prophet proclaimed, “God will set my steps firmly and lively also. As I trust in Him, He will not allow me to slip or fall, and I will do more than merely plod along – I will skip about with life and joy.”
Enduring Word