Title: Where Is God When Life Goes Amok?
Text: Habakkuk 1:1-4 and 2:1-4
Thesis: In the midst of trouble and fear, we rest in the fact the God is in his temple and the story is not yet complete.
Introduction
A cyclorama is a panoramic painting on the inside of a cylindrical platform, designed to provide a viewer standing in the middle of the cylinder with a 360° view of the painting. The intended effect is to make a viewer, surrounded by the panoramic image, feel as if they were standing in the midst of a historic event or famous place.
Panorama Mesdag is a panorama by Hendrik Willem Mesdag. It is on display in a special built museum in The Hague, the panorama is a cylindrical painting more than 45 feet high and about 130 feet in diameter and 390 feet in circumference. From an observation gallery in the centre of the room the cylindrical perspective creates the illusion that the viewer is on a high sand dune overlooking the sea, beaches and village of Scheveningen in the late 19th century. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panorama_Mesdag)
See if you can get the feel of it… imagine you are standing in the center of that cylindrical room as if you were standing on a sand dune with a panoramic overlook and are able to see a scene from a 360 degree perspective.
Project YouTube Clip Panorama Mesdag
People tend to be focused on what’s right in front of them, which would seem to be due to the physiological fact that we don’t have eyes in the back of our heads – unless you are a mother and then you do have eyes in the back of your head. It could also be due to the fact that history is not played out on a cyclorama so we can stand in one spot and observe the whole of it. Consequently, we are susceptible to becoming focused on only the one piece, one section, or one image at a time and failing to see, the big picture.
A panorama invites lingering and taking in the whole scope of a work of art so that the story becomes an all encompassing vision. God has a panoramic vision of how things are and how they will be. God sees the whole scope of things.
The fact that our vision is so “one-slided” or “single-scened” certainly skews our perspective and makes us wonder if God see what we see?
I. Does God see what we see?
How long, O 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 wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, conflict abounds. Habakkuk 1:1-4
The book of Habakkuk is essentially a series of conversations between the Prophet Habakkuk and God.
In 1:1-4, Habakkuk complains to God.
In Habakkuk 1:5-11, God responds to Habakkuk’s complaint
In Habakkuk 1:12 – 2:1, we hear Habakkuk’s second complain
In Habakkuk 2:2-20, we hear God’s second response.
And in Habakkuk 3:1-19, we hear Habakkuk’s response which is a prayer of praise and humble submission to the will of God.
Our text begins with Habakkuk complaining to God, “How long, O Lord, must I call for help but you do not listen?”
So, what was the nature of Habakkuk’s complaint in verses 3?
• Injustice – “Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?”
• Violence – “Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife and conflict abounds.”
His assessment of the ills of society in verse 4 is that the wicked people are prospering while the good people are suffering. And Habakkuk wonders why God allows this sort of thing to happen and when it does happen, why doesn’t God intervene and set things right?
One of the arenas where we are least tolerant of injustice is in sports. Matt Woodley tells of how he and his family sponsored a boy’s soccer team from Costa Rica. They turned out to be quite an elite team with advanced ball-handling and passing skills. They easily reached the finals of the soccer tournament. They were to play the American team for the championship.
From the onset it was apparent that the Costa Rican boys were the better team but the American boys were bigger and more physical players with a propensity for cheap shots and fouling. Unfortunately the officials were oblivious to every foul. They called nothing… and the upshot is that the Americans bullied the Costa Rican boys to a 2 – 1 final score and the championship.
Woodley said that he had to restrain himself from yelling at the inept officials… he said, “I just wanted them to notice the injustices and intervene like they are supposed to, and make a few calls. Instead they did not do their jobs and the game was not played fairly.”
That is how Habakkuk felt. He thought of God as something of a “heavenly official” or “reverent referee” who is supposed to keep the games of life in check so that life is fair. Isn’t God supposed to referee life so that bad people do not get away with stuff and good people do not have to suffer or be taken advantage?
I read a thought provoking op-ed piece by Thomas Friedman in the Denver Post on October 28, 2010 in which he questioned the integrity of every industry, institution and interest group in our country. Can we trust anyone to actually put the best interests of people first in a world where power and profit are the prize?
So with a world so messed up with selfish interests should we not expect that God would reach down and right all the wrongs? Habakkuk did and he decided God was messing up big time. He is upset and angry. Life is not going well and God seems to have distanced himself, so much so that Habakkuk thinks God is totally unconcerned about him and the things that weigh on his heart.
This single scene perspective on life is the only thing Habakkuk can see on the canvas… We might ask ourselves, what is the single scene on the landscape canvas of your life today? What might our complaints sound like?
The things that play on our canvases this morning are indeed of local, national and global interest… but there are also those personal things like addictions, marital tensions, unemployment, serious illnesses, conflicted relationships and so on. These are the things we see and these are the things we feel are often unfair and these are the things we thing God needs to see to when our lives run amok.
Why doesn’t God make a few calls and let the good guys win?
Despite what we think about the lack of awareness and the absence of God… God is present and God is fully aware and can actually see all of the things we cannot see.
II. God sees what we cannot see!
“Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.” Habakkuk 2:1-4
Thought we cannot see it, God says, justice is coming. He said, “Write it down… though it linger, it will certainly come.”
While we have a 180 degree perspective of life… God has a 360 degree perspective. We are single slide or single scene people and God is a panorama God. We are caught up in the moment. God sees eternity.
Tuesday is coming and it cannot arrive soon enough for me. If I could enact a single piece of legislation I think I would create a National No-Call Registry for Political telephone calls. And if that were not possible I would enact a law that requires individuals who place political calls to leave their names and home telephone numbers so we can return the favor.
Meanwhile… the only thing we can see right now is November 2. This midterm election is the only thing on our screens. This is the single most important moment in world history. And God needs to intervene right now or the world will explode.
Did you know that 600 years before the Puebloan People we know as the Anasazi built their cliff dwelling in the Mesa Verde / 4-Corners area of Colorado, their ancestors lived in pit-houses clustered in little villages in that area? And did you know that by 750 B.C. they had begun to build adobe homes on mesa-tops in that area? And then in 1,200 B.C. did you know they began to build and inhabit cliff-dwellings. We know that 1,410 years ago at least one group of people were making Colorado their home. 1,400 years ago they were living in pit-houses and 800 years ago they were living in cliff-dwellings. And now they are all gone and we are digging through the rubble to see who they were and how they lived.
When I drive down a lonely highway in rural America and see a deserted homestead with the buildings in shambles and homes that once were lived in by farm families I wonder who they were and what they were like. Inside that ghost of a farm home people made love, raised their children, sat around the table in the kitchen eating or playing parlor games or gathered around an old wood stove or an oil burner or stood over a register in the floor above a dinosaur furnace in the basement to keep warm.
In my mind I am thinking the 1930’s and the 1940’s and the 1950’s and the 1960’s were a long, long time ago… in reality each of those decades is but a blip on a radar screen or a date on a timeline. Each decade is a single scene on the panorama of history.
I don’t know what God has in mind… but I do know that a lot of people have come and gone on this planet over time. Dynasties have come and gone. Empires have risen and fallen. Kingdom were won and lost. Continents and countries are in constant change… the lines on the map are constantly being redrawn.
While we see little more than a single slide in an ever changing landscape, God sees it all. God knows the beginning and God knows the end. We just see our immediate situation and find it hard to trust that the God who sees the whole of it all really will make it all work out in the end.
Set in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the animated film “Finding Nemo” is the tale of a clownfish named Marlin and his heroic search for his son Nemo. Marlin’s life had been tragic. He lost his wife and all of his children (with the exception of Nemo) in a ferocious barracuda attack. So he had been very protective of Nemo. He had played it safe and never risking anything lest he lose his little Nemo too.
One day Nemo was caught by a deep-sea driver who take him to an aquarium in Sydney. So Marlin set out on an epic journey to find his little Nemo.
Along the way he met another lonely fish named Dory who joined him in his search. In the story the two eventually find themselves trapped in the belly of a great whale where Martin pounds against the slimy walls of the whale’s stomach until he falls limp, worn and exhausted. Dory asks if he is okay and he replies that he is not okay at all. He promised Nemo and he failed Nemo.
Suddenly the whale began to tilt back and Marlin and Dory feel themselves beginning to slip deeper into the whale’s gullet. They are holding on for dear life. Marlin is screaming… “He’s going to eat us; he is going to eat us! Then Dory hears the whale say, “It’s time to let go. Everything is going to be alright.”
Marlin asks, “How do you know everything is going to be alright? How do you know something bad isn’t going to happen?”
“I don’t,” she said and after a moment of hesitation she and Marlin loosened their grasp on the slimy walls of the whale’s stomach and the whale sprayed them out in Sydney Harbor where they were soon joyfully reunited with Nemo.
Sometimes the ride feels like a trip through time in the belly of a whale… it is a dark and uncertain and unpleasant ride but all the while the whale is taking us to Sydney Harbor.
Conclusion
Hear the Word of God from Isaiah 55: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 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
Habakkuk began his book complaining about a God who was unaware of what was happening in his life. Habakkuk ends his story praying, “Lord, I have heard your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord.”
Where is God when life goes amok? God’s presence and activity is being played out in every scene of the entire cycloramic panorama of our lives. And if we could see it as God see it, we too would say, “Lord, I have heard your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord.”
