1 I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower,
   and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

2 And the Lord answered me:

   “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it.
3 For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie.
   If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.

4 “Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.

5 “Moreover, wine is a traitor, an arrogant man who is never at rest.
   His greed is as wide as Sheol; like death he has never enough.
   He gathers for himself all nations and collects as his own all peoples.”

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The prophet Habakkuk is a perfect text to read during Advent, especially for those of us who are plagued by continual questions concerning God’s actions in this world. Why is God doing this or why is God not doing that? When is God going to act on this matter and why must I continue to wait? It’s the waiting on God that is so difficult is it not? And yet, Advent calls us to wait, wait in God’s seeming silence and inaction, wait in the growing darkness, enveloped in the chaos of personal crises and particularly in the situations of a world gone seemingly mad. Habakkuk understood our plight and asked these very questions of God in Habakkuk 1. Habakkuk 2 opens with a rather smug prophet thinking he has posed questions that God can’t answer, that Habakkuk has placed God in a vice-like conundrum.

And what is God’s answer? Quite simply it is I have not forgotten you. Indeed, God tells Habakkuk and us, remember what I’ve already said. Write it down, write it down on tablets so large that even in your haste you can read it and be assured that I cannot lie. You are worried about timing, God asks, what I have already stated is panting to be unleashed, the timing is just not right. It will be on time and it will most definitely come, until then, don’t be like the smug Chaldeans, live by faith.

Yes Beloved, we eagerly wait for God’s intervention in our lives and our world, but God’s response to Habakkuk proves that God is also eager to intervene. Yet, God does not desire that intervention to be deficient in any way. We must understand that all the factors, especially those that are shielded from our sight, must be perfectly aligned that God may be most glorified, for that should be the ultimate yearning of the righteous. And so we wait. We wait and walk in faith, yes blind faith, but blind faith backlit presently by the glow of God’s faithfulness in the past and assurance that God’s intervention is speeding toward us in the future. We wait in expectant and confident faith in the God who is always our answer.