Tuesday, September 30, 2025
Habakkuk 1:2-4; 2:1a, 2-3 – O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and You will not hear? Or cry to You “Violence!” and You will not save? Why do You make me see iniquity, and why do You idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted. … I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what He will say to me … And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end—it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay.”
Do you ever get frustrated with God? I know I do. And you can see Habakkuk the prophet getting very frustrated with God, right in this passage. Hear what he says! “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and You will not hear? Or cry to You ‘Violence!’ and You will not save? Why do You make me see iniquity, and why do You idly look at wrong?”
That’s not the way most of us were raised to talk to God. But it is an honest cry from the heart. It’s the cry of a man who can’t bear the evils around him, and he furiously demands to know how God can bear it, and when is He going to do something about it?
God doesn’t get angry with Habakkuk. No, He gives him an answer! He tells him help is on the way. God will not let evil go on forever; God Himself will come into our world and put a decisive end to it.
And He does. Because that is the ultimate answer to the prophet’s questions: our Lord Jesus Christ. God answered Habakkuk—and us!—by coming Himself into our world as a human body, one of us, born in to the same broken, ruined world we live in. He came to be our Savior—to fight for us against the powers of evil, and to destroy them utterly through the blood of His cross. And then He rose from the dead, destroying death, and promising to raise us also, everyone who trusts in Him.
God is not up in heaven, idly looking at wrong. He is with us, His people, who are now the body of Christ in this world. He is with us in His Holy Spirit, continuing the work Jesus began. And He is with us in our darkest hours, when we are climbing towers like Habakkuk did, looking for any sign of His coming. Because Jesus will come in glory at a time we don’t expect Him, and put an end to all death and sin and harm and grief forever. We are waiting for that day.
WE PRAY: Lord, it’s hard to bear the horrible things we see around us in this world. Come and save us! Amen.
This Daily Devotion was written by Dr. Kari Vo.
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