.....how long shall I cry for help?

We welcome Pr. Krista Mendoza as a guest blogger today reflecting on this passage from the lesser prophet Habakkuk. Habakkuk 1:1-4; 2:1-4   The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw. O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails. The wicked surround the righteous- therefore judgment comes forth perverted. Lord have mercy Christ have mercy Lord have mercy

MUSINGS I have spent more time in a state of Lament over the last year than I would care to admit. So much violence, so much hate, so many broken relationships, so much illness, so much fear, war, famine, drought, death.....and it is happening at every level of our lives from the personal to the local to the national to the global. There seems to be no escape from the cruelty we humans seem all too willing to inflict on one another and God's creation. Not to mention the daily pain of the incomprehensible deaths from incurable disease, accidents, unknown circumstances and age....the loss of jobs, the ending of marriages, trying to fit in at school... Ever since I first read this passage from Habakkuk as an undergraduate, I understood it. At least, I understood the first part. I understood Habakkuk and the place of heartache he spoke from and I understood the deep desire to turn that heartache and cry out to God and demand some tangible response. I had recently returned from serving in El Salvador for a second time when the passage first floated across my desk in a Hebrew Prophets course....I never forgot them. I held tight to them as I served in the Philippines and I read them with my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ in our darkest moments while holding the grieving families of those whose lives were cut short by political assassinations. I read them over and over and heard myself add my voice to Habakkuk as I turned to a God I wasn't sure I could trust....who seemed to do NOTHING in the face of such violence. It took me a long time to read the next chapter....what will God say to us, to you? What is God's great response to the suffering and pain of this world? Then the Lord answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. I will admit that I laughed from a place of utter despair when I read this the first time because all I could hear was the phrase, "wait." That laughter was followed by some words I will not repeat here! It took me while to go back to the words of God spoken to Habakkuk and written and passed down from generation to generation for some 2,500 years...something must be worth discovering in words carefully handed down for so long. This won't be a surprise to most of you, but it was to me in that moment...Jesus. Jesus is the vision, Jesus has come, Jesus is here. Let's back up for a second. For Habakkuk the vision and hope would come in the form of a remnant begin spared and taken into captivity at the start of the Babylonian Captivity...for Habakkuk it would be the eventual release of that remnant back to Israel...but for us, for you and me? Habakkuk's writing is far more than history. The vision and hope is Jesus. God's response to the world is, "I'm coming in the flesh." Jesus' words are, "I'm sending the Spirit." God's response is, "I'm here among you." Jesus' words are, "Do not be afraid." The Spirit says, "I am in you." Have courage. Jesus took care of the scary part; death. Jesus took it, looked at death, smiled, and shattered that darkness with light that can never be overcome. Jesus turned to us and said, "I have a gift for you. I give you new life and no one and no thing will ever take it away from you." In the midst of my Lament for this broken world and my broken life I am reminded where my strength comes from. I am reminded on who I can lean, on whose shoulder I can cry, on whose ears I can cry out in despair and on whose presence I can always depend...Jesus, my Lord and my God. From this foundation I am not afraid to stand to face the darkness. It is time.