Times are tough. Many people are out of work, or facing financial difficulty because their retirement has evaporated from poor investing strategies, or their company downsized so they have had to find anything, even a minimum wage job. Perhapss, like me they are suddenly without a spouse’s income through death, or possibly through divorce. It all can seem so bleak. Anxiety begins to press against the walls of your heart. You feel as if you are spiraling downwards. Costs pileup, and the money coming in (if any) can’t match it. If that is you, then the passage assigned to this past Sunday will speak to your soul as it did to mine.
“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 herds in the stalls, YET I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take joy in the God of my salvation. “ Habakkuk 3:17-18 (emphasis mine).
Time and again, God has always provided for His children. Give us this day our daily bread, we pray in the Lord’s Prayer. But do we trust in that? I am learning, like the Hebrews in the wilderness, I must daily trust God to provide for me – daily, not weekly, or monthly or yearly. Perhaps because right now, even though I think I want more security, I need day by day provision so I can better learn to totally trust on Him as my only security. God knows what I can handle better than I can. He knows what lies ahead down my life’s journey, I don’t. He will prepare me for it, if I let Him. Habakkuk speaks to that.
Habakkuk goes on to say that God is his strength. He also says God leads him and provides the means for him to travel the road he is on. He says God makes his feet like a deer’s and God makes him tread on high places. God doesn’t give Habakkuk deer’s feet because the prophet wants to traverse cliffs and sides of mountains, rather the reverse. Because God knows Habakkuk must be surefooted in his situation and not stumble, He provides him the means to do that. If we let God be in charge of our path’s direction whether that path leads through a deep dark valley, or a straight flat field, or up a steep, arduous mountain where the best protection exists, He will give us what we need to journey through this life.
So rejoice… and trust. I know, easier said than done. But it is a step by step process. All God requires is that we rejoice in Him today. Let Him handle tomorrow, and the next day. . .
