Why Do You Tolerate Wrongdoing?

The prophecy that Habakkuk the prophet received.

How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save?

Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds.

Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

Habakkuk 1:1-4

The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.

Habakkuk 2:20

God notices when people pile up goods they acquired unjustly.

We welcome God’s judgment of others, but there’s a pivot point in Habakkuk that gives us pause: “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him.” All the earth. Sometimes the appropriate response to God’s seeming silence is…silence!

Why silence? Because we easily overlook our own spiritual poverty. Silence allows us to recognize our sinfulness in the presence of a holy God.

Habakkuk learned to trust God, and we can too. We don’t know all His ways, but we do know that He is good. Nothing is beyond His control and timing.

The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked has no such concern.

Our Daily Bread – June 22, 2017