I have friends. One of them just sent the most encouraging email I’ve received in months. Here’s an excerpt:
I read Habakkuk … Is the whole point of life that God is waiting for us to show trust in Him? To say, “The fig trees aren’t blossoming like they’re supposed to, there’s no fruit on these vines, the crops are gone all to shit, the sheep have run off, everybody’s looking at me like What have you done?, the Enemy presses in at all sides, but, God, I will still raise my hope in you because I know you may even now be at the door.” That’s certainly the whole point of failure, since that’s the topic we started on. ”Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Jesus wouldn’t linger in his hometown because they were skeptics. What’s with that?
I’m pretty sure that all of life is meant to be a fight for joy and joy is only accessible through brokenness, because joy is essentially a refusal to believe that “this is all.” A refusal to despair. A recognition that things are not made to be this way and that ultimately our hope is outside of what we see in this crazy messed-up world. And when God destroys our little worlds, we see them for the matchstick houses they were.
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Habakkuk 3:17-18:
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.
