HCC in the Trenches: "How I'm Seeing God in This Crisis"

Claire Walker wants to share this with her HCC family …

Right before the COVID-19 outbreak took hold in Canada, God was leading me to spend time in the book of Habakkuk. Looking back I think maybe it was to prepare me for what was to come. About a month ago I was questioning God about suffering that was happening around me.

“God, why? Why are you allowing this?”

I didn’t understand.

Now here we are in the middle of a global pandemic and we may find ourselves asking the same question of this type of suffering. People all over the world getting seriously ill and some dying, people are out of work, and generally living in fear. With all that is going on many of us may find ourselves asking:

“God, why? Why are you allowing this?”

We don’t understand. We can’t understand.

We can’t always understand what God is doing because He is so much bigger than us, but because He is so much bigger than us, we can trust that He knows what He is doing, whether or not we can make sense of it. And this is where I’m finding myself back in Habakkuk this week. Habakkuk was a prophet in the Old Testament and the book contains a conversation between him and God. Habakkuk is dealing with something that we still deal with all the time: humans trying to understand God’s actions in the world.

“How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?

Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?”       Habakkuk 1:2 (NIV)

Just like us, Habakkuk had some major questions. Habakkuk saw the injustice of God using the more-wicked Babylonians to punish the less-wicked Judeans. Yet, instead of letting the frustration of these questions draw him away from God, he brings them to God in prayer.

You see, Habakkuk teaches us that it is okay not to understand what God is doing and it is even more okay to ask God our big and sometimes complicated questions. In Habakkuk’s case this opened the door to a dialogue, and conversation with God through prayer—this communication is one of the foundations of our relationship with God. In fact, grappling with these tough questions, and all the while clinging to God is exactly how Habakkuk builds such a firm foundation of faith. So, through the questions that Habakkuk is asking of God … which is more or less, “God why are you allowing good people to suffer?” … God answers him saying that He knows exactly what is happening, is aware of the injustices in the world, and that His plans are bigger than Habakkuk could even imagine.

“Look at the nations and watch—and be utterly amazed.

For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe,
even if you were told.”    Habakkuk 1:5-6

Through God allowing the more-wicked Babylonians to punish the Judeans, it actually brings the still-wicked people of Judah to repentance.

Habakkuk reminds us that although we don’t get to see God’s master-plan ahead of time, we do get to see His track record: both in scripture, such as these passages, and in our own lives. We see God’s faithfulness time and time again. We don’t get to know ahead of time how God will use something for His glory and our good, but we can have faith that he will.

So even in this time of uncertainty and confusion, why don’t we challenge ourselves to go to God with a different question: instead of “God, why are you doing this?”

Let’s ask “God, how will you use this?”

If God could use the suffering to bring glory to His people in the time of Habakkuk, surely, He can do the same today.

So as easy as it is in a time like this to question why God would allow such suffering, trust that He knows what He is doing and that He is exceedingly good and infinitely powerful.

Go to Him with faith in this time of suffering with your questions, concerns, worries, and uncertainties and ask God, “How will you use this?”

And know that He will bring good and glory.

Habakkuk grew to have a strong faith through the questions that he brought to God and the time he spent in prayer. What if we did the same? We don’t yet know how God is going to use the suffering in the world but maybe one way He will use it is for us to build a strong faith like Habakkuk. To draw near to Him again, to pray big prayers, to ask the questions we have about our faith, and to find rest in Him during this time of uncertainty.

“Though the fig tree does not bud and there is no fruit on the vines,

though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,

though the flocks disappear from the pen and there are no herds in the stalls,

The Lord my Lord is my strength;

he makes my feet like those of a deer

and enables me to walk on mountain heights!.”       Habakkuk 3:17-19 (CSB)