Habakkuk 3. This entire chapter is a prayer revealing, questioning, praising, and waiting for God's vengeance and victory for His anointed. Habakkuk knows God's wrath must come, the times are too bad for Him not to act, but he asks God to have mercy in His wrath. Pestilence and plague will go before Him. God will stand and measure the earth, shaking the nations, scattering the mountains, churning the rivers and the seas. The sun and moon will stand still as God tramples the nations in anger and crushes the head of the wicked. Habakkuk hears all this and his body quivers, rottenness enters his bones, but he still quietly waits for the day of trouble. He finishes by saying that though the fig tree does not blossom and there is no fruit on the vines; though the fields yield no food and there's no herd in the stalls, still he will rejoice in the Lord and take joy in the God of his salvation who is his strength, making his feet like hinds and making him tread upon the high places.

I know everything is cyclical and Habakkuk was talking about a different time of God's wrath, but the signs are always the same. Jesus told us to read the signs of our times, to be aware and alert. We are not to be seduced by the glittering lies of this world, nor are we to allow our attachment to our way of life make us blind or resistant to seeing what is really going on. Evil and wickedness exist, they are never at rest, they are always seeking our destruction. When we let our guard down, we become an open target for them and they move in. They lie to us, they corrupt us, and the world becomes worse and worse in the process until it is time for God to act again.

Habakkuk saw it in his time, I see it in ours. It is coming, in fact much of it has already begun. But though there may be no food on the shelves nor gas for the cars, we will wait quietly for God who is our strength.