Hope When Things Feel Hopeless

True confessions: I'm having a hard time right now with a lot of the things I see in the news. Ongoing conflict in Ukraine, continuing pandemic concerns, an incredibly challenging political climate (here in the US, anyway, as we start looking towards mid-term elections in the fall)...all of it has me asking, along with the Psalmist, "How long, oh Lord?" My devotional prayer time lately is full of, "God, I don't understand what you are doing here..." kinds of prayers.

It's in times like these I am glad I used to be a middle school Bible teacher. Why, you might ask? Well, the curriculum I was using had me teaching the kings and prophets of Israel and Judah to 7th graders. Honestly, this was a section of scripture I had not spent a lot of time reading before I started teaching it in 2001. But the minor prophets have become one of my favorite sections of scripture to read! Jonah, Amos, Hosea, Joel, Micah...the messages in these books seem like they could have just as easily been written to the contemporary church in North America as to the ancient nation of Israel in the centuries before Christ's first coming.

And when I feel the stress and frustration, that feeling of "God, don't you care what's happening in this world??"...well, in those moments, I turn back to the book of Habakkuk and re-read it.

The book of Habakkuk is all about the prophet asking God questions, because he doesn't understand what God is doing, and why God allows bad things to happen to His people. (Sounds timely, doesn't it?) But at the end of the book, Habakkuk ends with a prayer of faith, expressing his trust and reliance on God even when he doesn't understand God's plan. Chapter 3 of Habakkuk includes this powerful statement of faith:

Though the fig tree does not bud

    and there are no grapes on the vines,

though the olive crop fails

    and the fields produce no food,

though there are no sheep in the pen

    and no cattle in the stalls,

yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

- Habakkuk 3:17-18

This fills me with hope, and I hope it catches you as well: my prayer for you all is that you will be filled with the joy of the Lord in the face of whatever challenges come your way in the days and weeks we have ahead of us.

Image by Dayne Topkin via unsplash.com