This week again we spend time wrestling with Habakkuk.   

 

To remind ourselves of chapter 1 of Habakkuk we saw the prophet looking at the world around him and seeing that he was living in a society far away from where he saw a righteous world. Habakkuk longed for justice for his people, he wondered where God was in all of this and was impatient for justice to come.  

 

He raged and a questioned God and today we find in his wrestling he is waiting on an answer to his search for injustice.  

 

On holiday in Brittany, I visited St Malo with the family. The ancient walled city. The walls still surround the city intact. You climb up the steps and walk around the outer parts of the city, surveying the sea and looking out to the Channel islands in the distance.  You have to make the effort to climb up there and while you are there the elevated view reminds you of the silence and place that was built to watch and wait. 

 

I will stand at my watch 
    and station myself on the ramparts; 
I will look to see what he will say to me, 
    and what answer I am to give to this complaint. 

 

Habakkuk is now standing on the watch tower on the ramparts of the city wall, high above all that is going on in the city.  He sets himself away from others, to wait and he expects God to speak. He’s set out his case to God .  What answer will God give him? 

 

“There is a sweet spot between the known and the unknown. Where originality happens; The key is to be able to linger there without panicking” Ed Caertnel (Pixar) 

 

This is where Habakkuk is. He is moving from one part of life to another. The place where he knows what is happening, even when that is not what he would like. To a place where he is waiting to hear from God.  

 

It is in this season that God asks us to pray, to wait and learn what we are about to do. To make us ready for what lies ahead.  

 

Sometimes we are happy to wait there, the next part might be scary and unknown and outwith our comfort zone and we would rather linger there and not go on. 

 

Sometimes the place we leave is a difficult place and the waiting place is not somewhere we want to be.. it would be better to jump right into the new thing. 

 

But each time God asks us to wait and to pray and to look for him in all times and seasons.  

 

This waiting time is called a liminal season: 

 

“ Liminal seasons are thin spaces, where the presence of the divine is palpable. Liminal season are pure opportunities for people of faith and communities of faith to deepen their relationships and  to watch for the movement of God”  

 

It is in these seasons when often we think that nothing is happening that God strengthens us more and prepares us for the future. But like Habakkuk we must be ready for the answer and be ready to move and act when the time is right.  

 

At my ordination someone gave me this poem by ― Rainer Maria Rilker 

 

 

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”  

 

It's what happens in the waiting if we are patient. The answer comes! 

 

Habakkuk gets an answer. 

 

 

Write the vision; 
    make it plain on tablets, 
    so that a runner may read it. 
3 For there is still a vision for the appointed time; 
    it speaks of the end, and does not lie. 

 

The vision that God has given Habakkuk has not to be kept to himself. He has to write it down and make it plain and the vison for the appointed time will be revealed.  

 

God tells Habakkuk that it is in his time and if that seems to take a long time it is important to wait for God’s time will always be the right timing.  

 

How many times are we in this situation.  

 

It seems that God says wait and all will be revealed in his time but we are in a rush to get out of the situation we are in and need to rush on to the next place.  

 

If we rush we miss the things that God had for us or it feels that we are getting no answers or have been left even longer in the place of waiting.  

 

God tells Habakkuk to wait and wait until it’s the right time and tell the people even when the news he is about to bring is not one for the faint hearted.  

 

Then God answers:  

 

 

God says the proud have not got the right spirit, their attitude to things is look at me and what I have done but the righteous live by faith and just go about their business and no one knows what they do. They do it to serve God and not to look good to those around them.  

 

Then he goes on the wealthy are treacherous and arrogant, the people never have enough.  

 

It seems the world doesn’t move on that far in all these centuries.  

 

And then he goes on to list all the moral failures of the people, the nations they have captured, the wealth they have acquired, the idol building and drinking and disregard for the ways of God.  

 

 

 

And right in the middle of the all of this he says: 

 

“ For the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea.” 

 

God is saying to Habakkuk, tell the people to remember that I am always here. That throughout history the whole world is mine and that the knowledge of me is so vast.  Remember the things that I have done in the past. You have land and wealth and peace just now because of me.  

 

Look back in your history and see the people of faith that stood strong and their stories you now can recall.  Look at these examples and you will worship me in the right way.  

 

Has the worship of Idols ever saved you he goes on to say, can man save man or a wooden object give you life? Can you get advice from your idols whatever they are? 

 

All of this must have hit Habakkuk hard. 

 

Here he was longing for justice and mercy and this was the answer.  

It doesn’t take much for us today as followers of Jesus to get on the same page as Habakkuk.  

 

We could stand up on a high place and reflect and see all the same things as he did in our society.  

 

We wouldn’t look far for poverty, exploitation, greed, the worship of all things shiny and people searching for meaning and purpose in anything else  but God.  

 

We too live in this time of waiting.. 

 

Living through the questions toward the answers  

 

Waiting for God to show us the way forward and as individuals and as faith communities to discern together what that means for us.  

 

What we do know in all this waiting is that God’s promises to us are always faithful. We don’t wait on our own, for he is with us and goes before us.  

 

We go back to this : 

 

 “ Liminal seasons are thin spaces, where the presence of the divine is palpable. Liminal season are pure opportunities for people of faith and communities of faith to deepen their relationships and  to watch for the movement of God”  

 

The early Christians got this. They lived together and prayed together and grew together.  

 

If you have ever been on retreat or a mission trip you to will get a 24/7 community of God. At first you are strangers with the one goal and at the end you come away as a community with the purpose to serve God.  

 

There are places and people we all have, that we can visit that make us feel that there is an opening of heaven and that for that short time heaven touches earth.  

 

That is what we try to do as we create places for God to move in our world today.  

 

We stand and we wait but in the meantime we gather together and pray and wait for the answers.  

 

I don’t know if it’s the village in me but community for me is where God moves and helps us to grow. God gives us the perfect example of community. Living in relationship with the Son and Spirit. Each has their gifts and skills.  

 

 We all need each other, all our gifts and skills together to grow as the people of God in any given place. When one person is missing, when folks don’t get the change to use gifts and when God is not allowed to move and change and grow we get stuck and it’s hard to see where we go next.  

 

For us God has moved from his temple and lives in and through and around us.  He goes before us and gives us the strength to join in with him in this world.  

 

So we wait and ask questions and have the strength to live through to the answers.  

 

To God the Father 

God the Son  

God the Holy Spirit 

Amen.  

 

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