A deer that interrupted John and my hike up LeConte in July of 2008. Was it God trying to get our attention?
You've got to love that name: Habakkuk. Say it out loud. It's fun even funny to say. So why is it you hardly ever hear a sermon from Habakkuk? Is it because the questions Habakkuk asks are even more difficult than his name? And God's answers far more difficult than that.
Habakkuk asks the question we all ask - why? Why do the wicked seemingly prosper while the righteous suffer? Why has God used evil nations to punish the God-fearing? Ahhhhh, Habakkuk, if it were all that simple. Hasn't Judah rejected God and worshipped other gods? So which is better to reject God as His chosen nation? Or to follow evil as a nation that doesn't know God? I think rejecting God having known Him would be the greater evil. But that's just me. And Judah.
What it all comes down to is all of us are evil. All of us are putting something in front of God and so are really following other gods along with God. And so we should share Habakkuk's prayer, asking God: "in wrath remember mercy." [Habakkuk 3:2]
In the end, we must praise God. Even in the hard times? Especially in the hard times when evil or work or success or things or wants have taken us into captivity, the Lord is our strength...if we have any strength. Lord knows.
The Sovereign Lord is my strength;He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,He enables me to go on the heights.
The closing verse of today's reading is especially powerful for one who takes great joy in hiking the mountains and seeing the deer lightly wandering a mountain forest. John, remember the deer that bounded onto the path in front of us on LeConte? Was that God or an angel or just like us, part of His work?
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