You’re driving along the road, and you come upon a roadblock. Somebody is holding up a sign which says, "Slow, men at work." What do you see? What do you do?
Well, first, I speed up instead of slowing down. Why? Because I have important things to do, I have mv work to do, and I don’t want to slow down. Don’t you be telling me to go slow! I’m the original energizer rabbit! And I am busy, my work is important! I speed up!
And then the second thing I do is take a look at how many people are really working, and how many are just standing around! When I pass a roadwork site, I do a quick and dirty census. Twenty workers out here. Two are supervising, and we know that’s not work. Six are leaning an their shovels, three are talking on cell phones, four are getting a drink of water, one is in the portapotty and two others are in line, one is driving the big machine -- which looks more like play than work to me -- which leaves one guy, one lonely guy, to wield the shovel and move the dirt around. Twenty workers and only one sweaty soul is doing the work! Wow! What a rip-off!
But, oh well, it’s only tax money. Doesn’t matter, right? Right?!
Wrong! Wrong, because I feel cheated if only one man out of twenty appears to be working. Wrong, because I feel it’s unfair, inefficient, and wasteful. And most of all, I have to work, so why don’t they? Nobody does my work for me. Nobody allows me to hang out while others work. I don’t like laziness at my expense. Let me speed up and get to work and show them how it’s done!
Except that of course I may not have seen everything. I may not have understood what I thought I saw. I may not know that the shovel leaners are poising themselves to leap into action at just the right moment, when the earth-moving machine finishes its work. I may not have understood that the ones talking on the phones are coordinating things with expert knowledge. I may not have seen that the ones getting water were only a few minutes ago teaming together to lift a giant slab of rock. I certainly don’t understand the skill it takes to run that giant machine, and I don’t have a clue what it means to supervise such a complicated operation.
In other words, my smug snarling about their laziness is off base. What my eyes think they see is only part of the truth. The real issue is that I don’t need to be worrying about somebody else being lazy. I just need to get out of the way, and let them do their work as it was designed. I just need to trust them, that they know what they are doing, and I need to be on and about what I am supposed to do.
I
Sometimes it looks like God is lazy. Super giant lazy. Because, for crying out loud, cannot God see that there is a lot to be done down here? Cannot God grasp that this world needs His involvement, needs it now, needs it quickly? Somehow God must be lazy. God needs to get to work! Like I do!
Habakkuk the prophet thought that way. He raised a complaint. After all, things were getting desperate. The Babylonians had chipped away at the little kingdom of Judah until there was hardly anything left. King Jehoiakim had survived only by paying tribute, year after year after miserable year. Now, Lord, you know that’s not right! This is your nation! This king is the rightful descendant of David. This Temple in this holy city of Jerusalem you have promised to protect. So get busy, Lord! Get to work, God! Lord, how come you are so lazy!
The way Habakkuk said it was:
O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you "Violence!" and you will not save? Why do you make me see wrongdoing and look at trouble? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.
In other words, God, how come you are doing nothing in the face of all of this? How is it that you let me, your prophet, stand out here in the hot sun and yell my head off, and you do nothing useful?
Have you ever felt like that? Have you ever felt like crying out to God, "Just do something, anything, to correct whatever is going on out here?"
Shots rang out just the other night within sight of this church. Somebody was arrested for that. However, when it came time for a preliminary hearing, the arresting officer didn’t show up, and the case was dismissed. God, why didn’t you do something? Lazy!
Just up the road a young woman touched a bike rider with her car. It was an accident. No injury. No real problem. Except that the bike rider got up, pulled a gun, and blew her away. And it turns out that he hasn’t been locked up or tried on all kinds of other stuff. What’s wrong with the system? Lord, where were You? Can’t you do something? God seems lazy, not at work like He ought to be.
And this life of mine. Lord, can’t you see that I always have more month than money; can’t you see that the kids won’t obey, the wife won’t do her share, and I’m just plain sick? Lord, isn’t that enough to keep you busy? Aren’t you going to get up on your hind legs and do something for me?
Like Habakkuk, we complain. If God were really good at being God, He would have gotten busy by now. We suspect that God is terminally lazy, lounging around heaven, intoxicated by the singing of the angelic choirs and deaf to our pleas. "O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen?"
II
But you remember my story about the road crew? Sometimes we don’t see the whole picture. We don’t see all that goes into getting a job done.
The truth is that God is at work, and God is always at work. God is at work, according to His purposes, not ours, and He is always at work, bringing order out of chaos. God is always at work, but we don’t see Him working because He uses methods that we don’t understand. He works in His own way, and we rush by, like drivers on that road, unable to see the whole picture, unable to discern God’s methods.
God answered Habakkuk. He had a defense ready against the prophet’s complaint. God told Habakkuk that there was a whole lot more going on than Habakkuk could see.
Look at the nations, and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. For I am rousing the Chaldeans, that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own. Dread and fearsome are they.
The Lord says, Habakkuk, you are not going to believe this, but I am at work, and the tools that I am leaning on are the Chaldeans. Don’t tell me I’m not doing anything. I am doing something. It’s just that you don’t understand my methods. You don’t understand my tools. I am using what looks like nothing to achieve something. I am using instruments that look like throwaways to get something beautiful accomplished. God is always at work and God works by using tools we don’t appreciate.
When I was doing campus ministry, one of my schools was George Washington University. At GW we had a group called the Board of Chaplains. That was a cooperative effort to allow us to do some things together that we could not do separately. One of the chaplains on the Board was absolutely infuriating, because we would sit around and plan some activity, and then we would divide up the chores. Each one of us would agree to take on some part of the project, so that no one would have to carry the whole load. But this particular chaplain would never do a blessed thing! He had the uncanny ability to out- wait everybody else in the room. "We need somebody to do the publicity." Thirty seconds of silence, and someone would agree to do that. "Now we need somebody to arrange for the food to be served." We would look over at one of the women chaplains, sexists that we were, and one of them would sigh and agree to do the food. On and on the tasks would go, each of us agreeing to do something, until maybe there was only one thing left to do. And Father Hill would still be sitting there, smiling peacefully, volunteering for precisely nothing. I would get so angry! What is wrong with him? How did he get this far in life and he’s still so lazy?! Disgusting! But then, on the day of the event, while all the rest of us were running around madly trying to do all the stuff we had agreed to do, at the last moment, Father Hill’s students were taking care of his work. The young people in Father Hill’s ministry were doing his chores, learning something, owning the project, discovering their own abilities. Father Hill never even broke a sweat, but does that mean he wasn’t working? Does that mean he was lazy? Not at all. Not at all. He used instruments to accomplish his work. Unlikely instruments. Untrained college students. Young, novices, not very godly, some of them not even believers. But he did get his work done. And better by far than the rest of us who tried to go it alone!
The Lord told Habakkuk that He was always at work, using unlikely instruments. The Chaldeans?! A fierce, warlike, rapacious, pagan people? Doesn’t seem possible! But through them God would shape Judah and mold His people into what He wanted them to be. Through them God would work justice and direct history. It might not be the way you or l would like it. lt certainly will not be on our timetable. But God is always at work. We just don’t see it because the tools He uses seem so unlikely.
For example, God uses the tool of failure. If you fail or I fail, if the church fails at something, does that mean that God was not at work? Not at all. It only means that God is using failure as a tool to shape us and mold us into what He wants us to be. It only means that God is using failure as an instrument to nudge us into seeing that we need Him and that we cannot succeed on our own. It’s tempting to scream at God and ask Him why He is not at work at Takoma like He seems to be in some other churches. How come you can go out into Prince George’s County, set up a pulpit under a tree, and a few months later you have a mega-church with 5,000 people? Lord, how come You aren’t working here like you are working over there? Get busy, Lord!
But what we don’t see is that God will use failure as an instrument to accomplish His will. God’s Spirit will convict us and show us we have to be something more than what we have always been if we expect to succeed. For God uses unlikely instruments to accomplish His will; our job is to see that, trust Him, and work with Him. Our job is to get out of His way!
III
For, you see, the issue is not whether God is at work. God is at work. God is always at work, maybe using unusual tools, but God is always at work. The issue is not God. The issue is us. The issue is whether you and I can have faith in a God who is working all around us. All around us, yes, even us, drawing us in, enticing us, never bullying us, but summoning us, beckoning us, inviting us. God is at work, always at work, always at work around us, personally.
Habakkuk finally grew tired of complaining. The prophet gave up trying to do it all himself and then getting bent out of shape because he thought God should reward his efforts. Habakkuk gave up his complaining and took another stance. Habakkuk found out, in the deep places of his soul, that God was always at work around him and for him and through him. But Habakkuk had to give up the complaining first.
I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint. Then the LORD answered me and said: Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so that a runner may read it. For there is still a vision for the appointed time; it speaks of the end, and does not lie. If it seems to tarry, wait for ft; it will surely come, it will not delay. Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith.
"Look at the proud! Their spirit is not right in them, but the righteous live by their faith." My smug snarling about God’s laziness is off base. What my eyes think they see is only part of the truth. The real issue, the fundamental issue, is my faith and yours. We don’t need to be worrying about somebody else being lazy, least of all God. We don’t need to focus on how hard we work or how much we have to do. We just need to get out of God’s way, go about our own business, and cooperate with God’s own work as He designed it. We just need to trust God, that He knows what He is doing, and we need to be on and about what we are supposed to do.
Most of our grumbles about why God isn’t doing more boil down to this: we are so busy justifying ourselves and trying to prove ourselves that we don’t catch a vision of what God is doing. We are so busy looking good and impressing others that we haven’t caught the vision of where God is going and what He is doing around us. One deacon said to me during evaluation time a few years ago, "Can’t you keep on doing everything you’re doing, but just not look so busy doing it?" Wow! What an insight! She understood that I had a need to get credit for what I was doing. What I was doing!
No, our task is to get on board of whatever God is doing, with vision, with faith, with no thought of credit, and with no room to be smug and self-righteous. Our task is to stand on the watchtower, see the vision of what God is doing, and then live by faith that He will accomplish it. Our task is to be what God has called us to be and have faith that God will do what God wants to do. And to see that it can happen around us and through us and in us, and sometimes in spite of us, but God’s work will be done.
And we will find out, to our great joy, that in the world we thought God had abandoned, God is at work. That in the church we thought depended so much on our energies, God is always at work, using all those other flawed and unworthy people. And that in our very own lives, our overly busy, physically exhausted, emotionally drained, spiritually dried up, lives, even there, even there, God is always at work around us!
