Habakkuk 1:1 - 2:4 (links validated 8/18/22)

In the Bible Abraham is the father of all faith, and his life was mostly a series of journeys that involved trust. By faith Abraham packed up everything he owned one day and set off on a long trip toward an as-yet unspecified far country. God said “Go” and Abraham went. God said “Go to a place I will show you later” but Abraham did not reply, “Well, if I’m going to go, could you at least give me a hint, a general direction, a region on the map?” No, Abraham just went–no map, no end destination. Just a wing and a prayer, a dream of starry skies and sandy seashores and a home country out there . . . somewhere...What does the person of faith look like? He, she looks like Jesus, the One who so often sat down to teach but then always got up again to perform loving deeds. The person of faith looks like Jesus, the still-center of all comfort and joy and the ever-moving Son of God who knew better than anyone how much work there is to be done. The person of faith looks like Jesus who, even after his resurrection, did not sit around but said “Behold, I am going ahead of you into Galilee.” He’s always going on ahead of us. The person of faith who remains in the Word is always eager to follow.

Knowing that the tragedy was coming never stopped it from tearing at my heart. When I was a kid, “The Wizard of Oz” returned to network television once a year. Every year, awaiting her final triumph, children traveled afresh through all of Dorothy’s tears and terrors. And every year, my soul sank when Toto saw a cat and jumped out of the departing hot air balloon at the last moment. Dorothy followed her dog, and the Wizard of Oz, who had promised to take her back to Kansas, floated away, along with hope itself. More tears would follow! Of course, each year, Dorothy would learn that the power of return to that Kansas farm had always been with her. Real desire, and three taps of those ruby slippers, would take her home! Eventually I realized that the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion were themselves Kansans. They were the farmhands Hunk, Zeke and Hickory. So, even though Dorothy had been in a technicolor world of terror and wonder, she had never really left the company of her companions. Intelligence, heart and courage had walked with her all the way through Oz...

There’s an old German folktale recorded by the Brothers Grimm in which, for reasons far too complicated to explain, the hero finds himself ambushed by robbers in a forest, and bundled into a sack. The robbers tie a rope around the sack, haul it up into the trees and scarper, leaving him dangling up there with no way down. Fortunately, he hears someone coming along the forest track on horseback. He peers out through a tiny hole in the sack and sees that it’s a student from the local university. He doesn’t know, of course, whether he will be a friend or foe, so he decides to use a bit of low cunning. As the traveller comes closer, he calls out a cheery greeting from the sack. The student asks him what he is doing up there and whether he needs help. “Help? No, not at all. This is no ordinary sack. It is the sack of knowledge, and anyone who spends time in it will know everything there is to know about everything – philosophy, science,literature… The student’s eyes light up – this will be a lot easier than all that book-reading he has to do. “I don’t suppose you’d let me swap places with you for an hour or so?” he asks. The man in the sack agrees, trying to sound as reluctant as he can. The student lowers him down to the ground, and changes places with him, and is hauled up into the trees instead. The sack swings there for a few minutes, and then the student shouts down “Tell me, how long does this take to start working? I’m not feeling any more wise than I did before.” “Ah, give it a little while,” says the man down below, “and I can guarantee you will have learned a very important lesson indeed…” And the student did, even if it was only that you should never trust the word of a man who is tied up in a sack…

I’d like to offer a vision of this hope in action, using a scene from the most recent season (season 3) of the show Derry Girls. The world of this show is the divided town of Derry (also known as Londonderry), Northern Ireland in the mid 1990’s, during the final days of the three-decade-long civil war known as the Troubles. The two main sides of the Troubles were Unionists (those, generally Protestant, who sought to maintain union with the United Kingdom) and Republicans (those, generally Roman Catholic, who sought to unify with the Republic of Ireland). While the Troubles provide the backdrop of the show, Derry Girls actually focuses the majority of its attention on telling the coming-of-age story of a group of Northern Irish teens. It’s absolutely hilarious in the brutal honesty it offers about the universal experience of the painful awkwardness of being a teenager. However, it is deeply poignant in its portrayal of the fog of despair which often accompanies challenging times of conflict and social upheaval. In what I consider to be one of the most beautiful scene in this final season, we see one of the teens – the eccentric dreamer Orla McCool – dance her way along the medieval walls which still surround the center of Derry...

("What's it like for a house to be left behind? In one of his virtuoso inter-chapters, Steinbeck tells us: 'The weeds sprang up in front of the doorstep, where they had not been allowed and grass grew up through the porch boards. . . Splits started up the sheathing from the rusted nails. . . On a night the wind loosened a shingle and flipped it to the ground...")

("What does the person of faith look like, I wonder? Is the faith-filled person someone who exudes a serene confidence, a calmed and hushed and unperturbed spirit? Or is the faith-filled one the active and always-in-motion kingdom worker who is mostly a kind of holy blur of volunteerism?...")

About a month ago, I received an e-mail from a friend named Greg who wrote: "What happened to Mike Turner, an Presbyterian minister from Idaho, in 1998, surpasses even Job and Paul. I have been unable to identify any divine purpose that could be served by what he endured. Perhaps you, or some other strong brother or sister in my e-mail address book, can find something I can't. And if you do, please respond to me, because since I first read about this six weeks ago, I haven't been able to shake the challenge that this presents to my faith." Curious, I went to the Backpacker magazine website and learned the incredible, disturbing story about Mike Turner as written by Jeff Rennicke in the June 2002 issue...

Several years ago now there was a book which remained many weeks on the various lists of best sellers. The book was "Why Bad Things Happen to Good People." I cannot confess to having read the book, and, therefore, do not presume to comment on its contents or conclusions. I do want to comment on two things: its title and its popularity. The title, "Why Bad Things Happen to Good People," sums up succinctly one of the critical questions of Judeo- Christian theology, the problem of theodicy or the problem of understanding, explaining and justifying the actions and intentions of God. Simply put, the problem is this. Bad things happen to people in this world. Why? Why does an all-powerful God cause them or allow them to happen? Secondly, the book's popularity indicates that this is no idle question. People know that bad things happen. They happen to them. They happen to people they love and to people they know. They happen to people they read about in the papers or see on television news. Why?...

I remember a Pogo comic strip where Pupdog was drowning and the key figures of the Okefenokee Swamp convened a meeting to discuss how to save Pupdog . All sorts of suggestions came to the table. Meanwhile Pogo proceeded to get an old inner tube and a piece of rope and rescued Pupdog . The committee was elated that Pupdog was rescued, but got angry at Pogo for circumventing the process and rescuing him. Then they congratulated themselves on a committee meeting well done. This particular strip was entitled with the famous words, "We have met the enemy and he is us."...

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