Sometimes we experience pain and suffering which we do not cause. When we suffer we need to remember that our viewpoint is limited. Our limited viewpoint of pain and suffering compared to God is similar to our understanding of the shape of the earth prior to 1931.
For more than a thousand years we knew the earth was round, but we could not prove that the earth was round. We knew it intellectually, but we could not prove it physically. That was until 1931 when Captain Albert Stevens, an officer in the U.S. Army Air Corps, took his airplane to 21,000 feet above the earth and took a picture of the Andes Mountains in front of him which are 22,838 feet above the earth. If the earth was flat the Andes Mountains should have been level or slightly above the horizon of his picture which he took from 287 miles away. But the Andes mountains were well below the horizon of his picture, thus serving as the first physical evidence that the earth was round.[1] For years we knew intellectually that the earth was round, but we couldn’t prove it or see it physically.
And that’s sometimes how it works for us when we as Christians are in pain and suffering. We know that God is good, loves us, and has a plan. But it’s hard to endure pain and suffering because we can’t see His plan. We can’t see the whole picture that God is painting.
The prophet Habakkuk asked many of the same questions we ask and said many of the same things we probably say. Habakkuk has said, “I call for help” (1:2a). Habakkuk wonders, “You will not hear?” (1:2b).[2] Habakkuk laments to God, “You do not save” (1:2c). Habakkuk sees, “iniquity . . . wickedness . . . destruction . . . violence (1:3). Habakkuk concludes that “justice is never upheld” (1:4).
But we can trust that in the future after we’ve endured pain and suffering, that God will show us the full picture and we will understand his perspective. In her book on Habakkuk, Trembling Faith, Bible teacher Taylor Turkington explains it this way. “The grieving prophet models for us how to respond to evil. So we pay attention instead of looking away, lament instead of numbing out, and ask with expectation instead of avoiding God altogether.”[3]
Habakkuk is going to experience this as he expresses his questions and frustrations with God. Reading Habakkuk’s cry (1:2–3) teaches us that questions of God should occur in the context of trust of God. Reading Habakkuk’s concern (1:4) teaches us that questions of evil and suffering should acknowledge we live in a fallen world. Next week we will read God’s answer (Hab 1:5–11) to Habakkuk’s cry and concern. God’s answer will surprise Habakkuk and it will surprise us as well.
[1] “90 Years of Our Changing Views of Earth,” NASA. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/90-years-of-our-changing-views-of-earth Accessed May 30, 2023.
[2] Scripture taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.
[3] Taylor Turkington, Trembling Faith: How a Distressed Prophet Helps Us Trust God in a Chaotic World (Brentwood, TN: B&H, 2023), 27.