A few weeks ago my daily devotion was based on Habakuk’s reaction to God’s seemingly indifference to the plight that His people were suffering. During it, I saw similarities with the situation then as it is occurring now.
The predicament that faced the nation of Israel during Habakuk’s time could be compared to what the nations of the world are experiencing currently with the COVID-19 pandemic.
When we read the book of Habakuk, we see how angry, frustrated and impatient he became with God for allowing the kingdoms of Babylon, Persia and Media which grew into a world power, conquer the land of Israel and the rest of the known world at the time. He questioned God’s motive for allowing that one wicked army to invade the other nations and inflict so much violence and injustice on them. However, God told him:
Look among the nations! Observe! Be astonished ! Wonder! Because I am doing something in your days – you would not believe if you were told.
Hab. 1:5 NASB
In light of the devastation and destruction that COVID-19 has caused and continues to cause worldwide, we can be encouraged by God’s answer to the prophet. The same way Habakuk looked and saw violence and injustice around him, to-day we can substitute what he saw to what is happening to our generation. Like him, we might ask God why did He allow such a plague that has supposedly started in a Godless nation to spread worldwide and to cause so much hardships – physical, mental, financial and have probably caused some to lose their spiritual focus.
Through this maze of the coronavirus, the Lord might be trying to teach us to be more dependent on Him and not on ourselves. For a long time we have been praying for revival. He could possibly be showing us that revival doesn’t necessarily have to start in the church building since it has been over nine months that we have been conduting church outside.
So my encouragement to each of us as we enter this joyous season is that in spite of what went down for the past several months, we can still rejoice because Jesus came to give us new life and new hope. Because of Him we can release all our fears, anxieties, worries and cares. Material things may not be today as they were in the past, but I’ll close with this admonition from Habakuku 3:17 and 18 (NASB):
Though the fig tree not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail, and the fields produce no food and there be no cattle in the stall, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.
Habakuku 3:17-18 (NASB)
Have a very blessed Christmas and remember as we face 2021, with Christ in the vessel we can smile at the storm.