Bible Reading
Right ladies, we are going to dive right into our next Bible reading. Habakkuk chapter 3. Ladies, Habakkuk chapter 3 and we’ll start in verse one.
A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionoth.
O Lord, I have heard the report of you,
and your work, O Lord, do I fear.
In the midst of the years revive it;
in the midst of the years make it known;
in wrath remember mercy.
God came from Teman,
and the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah
His splendour covered the heavens,
and the earth was full of his praise.
His brightness was like the light;
rays flashed from his hand;
and there he veiled his power.
Before him went pestilence,
and plague followed at his heels
He stood and measured the earth;
he looked and shook the nations;
then the eternal mountains were scattered;
the everlasting hills sank low.
His were the everlasting ways.
I saw the tents of Cushan in affliction;
the curtains of the land of Midian did tremble.
Was your wrath against the rivers, O Lord?
Was your anger against the rivers,
or your indignation against the sea,
when you rode on your horses,
on your chariot of salvation?
You stripped the sheath from your bow,
calling for many arrows Selah
You split the earth with rivers.
The mountains saw you and writhed;
the raging waters swept on;
the deep gave forth its voice;
it lifted its hands on high.
The sun and moon stood still in their place
at the light of your arrows as they sped,
at the flash of your glittering spear.
You marched through the earth in fury;
you threshed the nations in anger.
You went out for the salvation of your people,
for the salvation of your anointed.
You crushed the head of the house of the wicked,
laying him bare from thigh to neck.[c] Selah
You pierced with his own arrows the heads of his warriors,
who came like a whirlwind to scatter me,
rejoicing as if to devour the poor in secret.
You trampled the sea with your horses,
the surging of mighty waters.
I hear, and my body trembles;
my lips quiver at the sound;
rottenness enters into my bones;
my legs tremble beneath me.
Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble
to come upon people who invade us.
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me tread on my high places.
To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments. (Habakkuk 3:1-19)
This is the Word of the Lord.
Hope vs Numbing
Well ladies, I don’t know about you, but I found Unathi’s spoken word perfectly summed up the struggle. It was beautiful, wasn’t it? She didn’t just leave us in the struggle, she pointed us to hope as well. Hope you noticed that.
And we’re going to think a bit now about Habakkuk and how it does that. Can I suggest that firstly, the way for us not just to endure the side of Heaven, the first thing we need to do is not numb ourselves. We live in a world that numbs itself. We numb ourselves so we don’t have to face sin – our own and others – so we don’t have to face suffering or face injustice. We numb to shut out the brokenness of the world, to not see it, to not hear it, to not feel it.
And the options to numb are endless. You can go the drug or alcohol route. The stats about teenagers using drugs and alcohol at school to cope are estimated to be about 16%, at school to get through the day. The number of adults who need to take something to make it through the day is suggested to be over 43%. In the end, the drugs and the alcohol and the medication will need larger and larger doses to be effective and soon dysfunctionality sets in.
Sadly, many of the drugs abused are legitimate, prescription medications that are often life-saving for some. I’m not talking about doctor prescribed and supervised medication. I’m talking about the popping of pills or the abuse of drugs that alter your mindsets and leave you feeling less self-controlled and less aware.
You could also go the cheesy slogan route, to box up pain so you don’t have to wrestle with the complexity of living in the world where things are hard. So you can go the good old toxic positivity route. This is often expressed as, “You must just think positively, it’ll all be fine, you’ll see”. Can you name one disease, one cancer, one disaster or a sudden death that can be taken away by being positive?
What about denialism? I just remove myself from that context or that relationship because it’s too hard to bear witness to. Sometimes within the church, even good doctrine can be weaponized to minimize someone’s suffering or create distance because, again, the pain is just too hard to watch.
Sometimes we use it to silence those who are even brave enough to confront our world’s sin and pain. It sounds like: “God will use this for your good. God will let this be a testimony to many others. He wouldn’t give you something too big for you to handle. That’s not God. Psalm 56 we’re told that our God has kept account of every single one of my tossings, he knows my tears. He’s put them in a bottle. They’re in his book.”
Now those doctrines are true and they are needed to guard our Gospel but our God is not naive to the pain and suffering that we have, nor does he tell us not to express our suffering and our pain.
Night bird, who was a singer songwriter who lost her battle to cancer, said, “God isn’t desperate, isn’t distant. When you are breaking in your pain, he’s right there with you on the bathroom floor, in the thick of it, in the mess of it. He’s with you in the pain. He knows it. He can handle it. He doesn’t call for distance.”
One of the other numbing techniques is distraction, mostly through device usage. I discovered a very cool word when thinking about this talk: “nomophobia.” A recent global study suggests that approximately 65% of the world’s population experiences nomophobia. To put that in context, that’s pretty much that sort of section of us. Nomophobia is a psychological condition in which a person experiences anxiety or fear when they do not have connectivity with their phone. You’re laughing because you know it’s true!
65%. The fear reflected behind that statistic is a fear of not knowing, not being able to control a situation or an outcome. So it’s called doomsday scrolling. I mean, that’s really interesting. Our first passage in Revelation was all about God revealing himself to us and here the fears tied to not knowing, not having something revealed. The fear is that if we know, if we don’t know, we can’t control the outcome, and so then we can’t be caught out. And so, we scroll and we scroll and we scroll.
Or you could use your device purely for entertainment: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, threads. It’s not, judge who uses what in this room, according to which age group. They’re there. Netflix, Disney Plus, Prime video, Apple TV, Britbox. It’s endless. Gaming, watching gaming tutorials, watching other people gaming. If you have a child under the age of 10, you know what I mean. Online shopping therapy, ladies. As if another pair of shoes will solve our pain. They do always fit though, which is great!
Or to switch our brains off or to not think or engage with other people. I’m not talking about a reasonable amount of time on your screen or for your work or functionality, I’m talking about people who miss engaging with life and with people because the screen is more important. Because people are hard, and they disappoint and they mess up and I don’t have to put up with that with my device.
What about health? It might sound like a strange one, but the addiction to body image and exercise induced endorphins are on the rise. One third of teenage boys now use protein supplements as part of their gym routine to get the body that will make all the other things about life less important. Compulsive exercise is becoming a problem in some countries, with people opting out of work in lieu of exercise, opting out of community because “I need to go to the gym.”
The same is true about food addiction. More and more countries are now declaring it an official disease and offering counselling services to counter its rise. And again, both exercise and food are important, but I’m talking about obsessive exercise and eating so I don’t feel the pain, I don’t see the brokenness in my world.
Numbing is how our world navigates grief, loss, pain, suffering and sin. But not God. He speaks, he engages, he suffers too, and in Habakkuk, we’re going to now look at what healthy, God-honouring wanting help looks like.
Habakkuk’s Response to God
Did you notice in chapter 3:1 and 3:19? Two little information bits that the narrator has given us. Habakkuk has given us. 3:1,
“A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet, according to Shigionoth.” (Habakkuk 3:1)
And at the end, 3:19,
“To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.” (Habakkuk 3:19)
This might surprise you. It surprised me all over again in preparing for today, that Habakkuk’s response to God’s sure promise of final judgment and justice, is to sing, poetically. Shigionoth is a musical term often used in the books of Psalms and we’re told that this song has been written for stringed instruments. It’s lovely we’ve got a cello today. And of course, the term “selah” which is often repeated in the Psalms as well.
I don’t know about you, my default expression is not song. My friends will tell you that I’m a funny person and, in fact, it’s a long-standing joke amongst my friends that I am the funniest amongst us. And this is largely due to the fact that my default setting – when it comes to pain and suffering and conflict and awkwardness – is to break the tension with a joke. For those of you know “Friends,” I’m the Chandler. My default in navigating seriously hard stuff is not to break…
