Twenty years before the Babylonians captured Judah and led them into captivity, Habakkuk was a prophet in Judah who was very troubled by the sin all around him. The powerful and wealthy oppressed the poor and powerless, and Habakkuk did not understand why God allowed the wicked to prosper.
When God showed him in a vision how He was going to use the cruel and exceedingly wicked Babylonians to correct unrighteous Judah, he was even more troubled, and could not understand. He saw good people suffering at the hands of the powerful, and questioned why God would allow these things to happen.
We often wonder about the same things ourselves. We see bad things happening to good people, and we wonder if God really cares. But God tells us that His thoughts are not our thoughts, and our ways are not His ways. His very magnitude is almost impossible to grasp, and the fact that He is intimately involved in the life of every person on earth is incomprehensible to our limited minds. We cannot know or understand the panorama of God’s plan.
Writer Poh Fang Chia laid it out most clearly:
“In moments when we don’t understand God’s ways, we need to
trust His unchanging character. That’s exactly what Habakkuk did.
He believed that God is a God of justice, mercy and truth. (PS 89:14)
In the process, he learned to look at his circumstances from the
framework of God’s character instead of looking at God’s character
from the context of his own circumstances. He concluded, ‘The
Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of
a deer, he enables me to tread on the heights.’”(HAB. 3:19).
We may be distressed by life’s seeming injustices, but we can only find contentment through seeing everything through the lens of God’s goodness. Sometimes only hindsight shows us how God used a painful period in a life to accomplish a wonderful thing. I have written about how the months my son spent in prison, sentenced and eventually justified for an embezzlement he did not commit, was used by God to make powerful changes in his very soul.
Believe me, it only takes one such experience to change forever the lens through which we view our lives. I have a peace, truly, which passes all understanding. I may suffer circumstances which I hate, but my faith in God’s love and goodness will never be shaken. I am so grateful for every example of God’s providence, even through pain, in my life. He has truly taught me to be content.
Being content does not mean not caring. It does not mean not feeling the wounds. It just means knowing without the shadow of a doubt that God is there, He is love, and He is using every circumstance for ultimate good. And having this assurance, this heart-treasure, is worth every pain we could ever suffer.
