Observation: The prophet Habakkuk ends his book on a cliffhanger. He affirms that God will vindicate the people of Judah, and attack their enemies, but it hasn't happened yet. In the midst of failing crops and other bad omens, Habakkuk says, "yet I will rejoice in the Lord."
Application: I think I'm pretty typical of Americans in that I crave closure and happy endings. I need to know how things will work out. It's frustrating to get something started without knowing how it will work out in the end. It's disappointing to lend your voice to a cause or your work to an effort if you can't see the fruits right away, or if you seem to fail in the end. This can make me risk-averse sometimes.
That's what I appreciate about Habakkuk...the book ends before the prophet sees any of the reversals of fortune that he describes. the book ends with all kinds of loose ends just hanging out there or God's people, and there's really no concept of how it'll go.
Sometimes we just have to be okay with not having closure, or not having the outcome we hoped we'd have. We have to be okay not being where we pictured we'd be by this point in our lives. We have to be okay with the causes we care about being an ongoing process, that's two steps forward, one step back, if we're lucky. We have to be okay with calling it a day, a week, a year, without having checked any of the boxes we set out to check, not because we didn't try, but because life took a detour. We have to be able to turn in what we have to God, like a paper we wish we'd had another two weeks to work on, trusting that what God will take it from here.
Life rarely ties things up as neatly as a movie or TV show would. There are a whole lot more "To Be Continued's" than there are "The End's." And that's okay. Our job is not to finish the work. It's our job to work on it while we can, and hand it back to God.
Prayer: God, help me be okay with things not working out the way I'd hoped. In Jesus' name, amen.
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