Speaking our language

"How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?" Habakkuk 1.2

Habakkuk was a contemporary of Jeremiah and therefore lived through the sunset years of the southern kingdom of Judah, in the latter part of the 7th century BC. Like Jonah, Habakkuk's writing appears to be more autobiographical than declamatory, concentrating on the prophet's relationship with God, rather than on external affairs. Yet in his wrestling with God over the state of the world and in the expression of faith and trust which he eventually reaches, Habakkuk could be speaking for many, then and now. So his account offers a timeless window into how a person of faith gains at least some understanding of the mysteries of life in an unfair world and of the apparently fathomless ways of the God of justice, who has a plan to resolve and redeem all such perplexities.