All Who Are Weary: A 5-Day Study to Find Rest for Your SoulSample

Sometimes, our hopes feel like milk bottles stacked in a pyramid shape in a carnival game. Life is the baseball, aimed, thrown, and knocking down each hope one by one. We hope the treatment will work. Smack! We hope our marriage will heal. Smack! We hope our finances will turn around. Smack! We hope justice will be served. Smack! Life hits those hopes hard, and down they crash. It’s all too tempting to give up, believe nothing is going to change and sink into despair.

Despair says hope has run dry. Despair looks at our circumstances and declares, “Why bother trying? Just give up.” Despair is the phrase spoken by Job’s wife when she said, “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9). Even for those of us who have grown up hearing the Christian message of hope, despair still lurks around the corner, waiting to pounce when hope feels weak. Grief forces you to ask if your hope is real and if it’s worth holding on to.

Despair is one of the weightiest burdens so many of us bear.

We’re not the only ones who have been tempted to despair. The Old Testament prophet Habakkuk grieved the wickedness and injustice he saw in Israel, and he was angry God didn’t seem to be doing anything about it. When are You going to finally show up, God? the prophet asks. God answers that He’s doing something about it—He’s been working.

God makes it clear He will deal with all wickedness and save His people in the process (Hab. 3:13). He answers Habakkuk, but God doesn’t resolve all the questions, and Habakkuk certainly doesn’t love the answers God gives. Yet in the meantime, the prophet can only wait. “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint” (Hab. 2:1).

We don’t like waiting. We like our instant pots and our high-speed internet and our same-day delivery. We want our emails answered within minutes and our children to “just hurry up and get in the car.” Most of us are woefully bad at waiting—and waiting on God is no exception. And if God doesn’t act on our schedule, we pull a move like Abram did when he slept with Hagar (Gen. 16).

But God has never been pressed for time. He’s never been in a rush or scrambling to get out the door. He’s never looked at His watch and realized He missed an appointment or was late making good on a promise. No. The sovereign God works in ways we can’t always understand and on a timetable we don’t usually like.

Habakkuk chooses to wait on God. And his example reveals that our suffering and sorrow doesn’t have to lead us to despair. It can lead us to a place of trust, joy, and security while we wait on God to do what He said He’ll do. Habakkuk’s words hinge on the reality that he knows God will make good on His promises. Until the darkness becomes light and tears turn to joy, the prophet watches and waits, holding onto the sure and steadfast hope that God will come through in the end.