Many of us have been there. Standing in the middle of an empty room, your shattered hopes strewn across the floor like glass. Each shard tempts you to pick it up, to stare through that fractured sliver of a dream one last time. But you know doing so will only leave your hands bloody and your heart broken. Perhaps you stand amid such debris even now.
If so, you are not alone. Scripture is filled with characters who found indomitable happiness amid broken hopes, people who knew deep joy even as they swept up the remains of their most cherished ambitions. Habakkuk was such a man.
Crushed to Powder
A century before Habakkuk became a prophet, God sent Assyria to punish the northern tribes of Israel by dragging them kicking and screaming from the land God had promised them. Judah remained, but the nation was rank with injustice — the law no more effective than a powerless paralytic (Habakkuk 1:4). Habakkuk knew not only the pain of personal hopes dashed but of national hopes plundered.
Perhaps a paraphrased version of Habakkuk’s encounter with God will reveal his pain is not far from ours. In a prayer that echoes our own cries of confusion, Habakkuk essentially says to God, “Why are you sitting on your hands? Why won’t you save us?” (1:2). God’s answer crushes the desires the prophet had for Judah: “Marvel, O man. I am even now working wonders. I will wield the wicked Babylonians to enact my justice on Judah” (1:5–7). Here is sorrow upon sorrow for Habakkuk. This was not the answer he hoped for!
The prophet balks at what he considers God’s miscarriage of justice. “Are you not a holy God? How can you allow — indeed, ordain — the wicked to prosper and your people to face ruin?” (1:12–13). When our dreams perish, how easy it can be to put God in the dock. When our castles in the air crash down on the ground, too often we call on the Rock to give an account of himself.
Yet God responds. As with Job, he answers Habakkuk’s accusations with an assurance of his sovereignty. “Trust me. Justice will be done. The righteous shall live by faith. I still sit in my holy temple. Let all the earth keep silent before me” (2:2–4, 20). In this moment, we find the quintessential fight of faith. Habakkuk’s original hopes have been shattered and then crushed to powder. All he has left is God and his word.
Is joy still possible when hope seems impossible?
Indomitable Happiness
Habakkuk’s response takes the breath away:
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 herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me tread on my high places. (3:17–19)
The circumstances have not changed. The news of Judah’s demise still horrifies the prophet so much he can barely stand; his bones feel like liquid (3:16). God offers no superglue to put his hopes back together. “Yet . . .” That is the conjunction of Trinitarian Hedonism, three letters that bear the weight of glory. Yet upends our natural expectations. How can Habakkuk make such a statement of defiant joy? How can we?
The Present Good of God
Habakkuk rejoices in God. He finds his joy in God. He may be deprived of goods and bereft of kindred, the land may be plundered by the Babylonians, and the wicked may seem to prosper, but joy remains because Habakkuk has the present good of God. When all of his previous hopes are put on one side of the scale and God on the other, there is no comparison. He has learned, like Asaph in a similar plight, to say, “As for me, the nearness of God is my good” (Psalm 73:28 NASB). When our joy is in the Giver, not merely in his gifts, the gifts can go, yet our joy remains shatterproof.
Can you say with Habakkuk, “Yet I will rejoice in God”? Test yourself by translating the situation. Though I am fired from my job, and my income dries up. Though my children rebel and walk away from the faith. Though cancer spreads through my body, and there is no cure. Though we have tried for years, and no child comes. Though my husband left me. Though my car is totaled. Though my friend betrayed me. Though the pain won’t relent. Though. Though. Though. Can you still utter Habakkuk’s stunning yet? Nothing magnifies God more than that kind of unshakable satisfaction.
Hope of the Happy Ending
However, indomitable joy would be an oxymoron if it had no future. Habakkuk treasures God over all his gifts, and he looks to the happy ending of the story. He hints at this ending when he acknowledges God as his strength, the one who “makes my feet like the deer’s” (Habakkuk 3:19). Deer are sure-footed; they vault over obstacles; they climb mountains with ease. Habakkuk is still deep in the valley, yet he is confident God will bring him up to the heights. Like the psalmist, he will go further up and further in (Psalm 43:3–4).
God himself promised this happy ending: “The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Habakkuk 2:14). In other words, God wins. His glory will flood the earth. In the end, his unspeakably beautiful plan will be unfurled for all to see. No though can stop it. Like Abraham before him, Habakkuk had faith that when God made a promise, he would not (and could not) break it. A Lion would come from the tribe of Judah — even if God had to resurrect a nation from the ashes of Babylonian fires to make that happen. He would make all things new. Habakkuk knew, even if he did not see it in his lifetime, the end of the story would be a happy one, and so his joy remained unbroken.
Friend, we know much more of the story than this Old Testament saint. We have seen the Lion of Judah triumph on the cross. We have heard his words to us: “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Hebrews 13:5). We know his unflinching commitment to work all things together for our good (Romans 8:28). So, even when horrors abound, when pain multiplies, when dreams fade, when tears flow, when wrecked hopes are piled around us, yet we can be indomitably happy in God.
Desiring God