Last week we marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of September 11 attacks. In the days and weeks following that darkest day in modern US history, we heard the same question surface again and again, in different words but with the same ache underneath it, “Where was God?”
That is not always an irreverent question. Often that question comes from grief, not defiance. Something in us wants to know why, and we have all been taught, one way or another, that asking “why” is dangerous. Maybe you remember it from your own childhood. A parent told you to do something, you asked why, and the answer was simply, “Because I said so.” That answer may have worked well enough at the dinner table, but it causes us to grow up believing it is not really safe to ask the One in charge “why.”
So when the dark seasons come, and they will come, we go quiet. We stop praying honestly and start praying carefully, as if God needs to be managed rather than trusted.
There is an entire book of the Bible built around someone who refused to go quiet. Habakkuk is different from almost every other prophet. Most of the prophets speak to God’s people on God’s behalf. Habakkuk does something else. He speaks to God, and we get to listen in on the conversation. He looks at the corruption around him, the courts that could be bought and the justice that never went forth, and he says plainly, “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?” (Habakkuk 1:2-3, ESV).
That is not a man losing his faith. That is a man practicing it.
Notice what Habakkuk does not do. He does not walk away. He stays in the conversation. “O LORD” is not the language of someone giving up on a relationship. It is the language of someone still in it, still leaning toward Him even while frustrated with Him. There is a real difference between complaining about God and complaining to God. One turns your back and tells everyone else how disappointed you are. The other stays at the table and tells Him.
Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, did the same thing. “Righteous are you, O LORD, when I complain to you; yet I would plead my case before you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?” (Jeremiah 12:1, ESV). Job did it too, all the way through his suffering, refusing both his wife’s advice to curse God and his friends’ insistence that he must have sinned to deserve his pain. And in the end, God said of Job’s friends, “You have not spoken of me what is right, as my servant Job has” (Job 42:7). Honesty, it turns out, honors God more than silence does.
Habakkuk could only be this honest because he already believed God was good. His questions were not evidence of weak faith. They were evidence of strong faith colliding with a confusing world. You do not get angry at a stranger’s failures. You get angry, or confused, or heartbroken, when someone you trust does not act the way you expected them to. Habakkuk’s confusion was rooted in his confidence, not in doubt.
And God answered him. Not the way he expected, and not on his timeline, but He answered, “Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told” (Habakkuk 1:5, ESV). God was already at work. Habakkuk just could not see it yet.
I turned sixty-two this week. You know what my wife gave me for a present? A brick! What I didn’t tell you, though was it is an engraved brick with my name on it, headed for the courtyard at the Dr Pepper Museum. If all you knew was she gave me a brick, that would sound like a terrible present. When you know all the details about the brick and when you know that I am huge Dr Pepper fan, you realize what a wonderful gift it is. That is how it goes with most of what God is doing in our lives. We see the brick. He sees the courtyard.
Isaiah put words to this a long time ago: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9, ESV).
So if you are in a dark season right now, and you have more questions than answers, do not go silent on God. Do not walk away and complain about Him to everyone else. Stay in the conversation with Him. Bring Him the question. He is not afraid of your honesty, and He is not offended by your grief. He would rather have you cry out to Him than give up on Him.
You may not get the answer you expected. But He is working, even now, in your darkness.
John W. Crowder is the pastor of First Baptist Church in West, Texas. He is the author of Anchor Point: How to Lead with Faith, Find Strength, and Rebuild with Hope After Crisis, available on Amazon.
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