While handling a Bible someone gifted Desiree, I noticed a rather conspicuous gap between the pages in one spot. Upon opening the Bible there, I found a shiny new penny.
Strange.
Why
there? A random act? Sheer chance? Or might some design be in effect?
The
coin marked the beginning of Habakkuk, a minor prophet. I was unfamiliar with
the book and had to do some studying.
Habakkuk
is a remarkably honest little book. The prophet looks at a world drowning in
violence, corruption, and injustice and asks God the question believers have
been asking for thousands of years: "Why don't You do something?"
God's answer is unsettling. Habakkuk learns that faith is not built on having
firm answers. Sometimes it must carry true believers through hard answers and
anguish. By the end of the book, nothing around Habakkuk has changed. Trouble
is still coming. Yet his outlook has been transformed. He chooses to rejoice in
God, even if the crops fail, the livestock disappear, and every earthly reason
for optimism evaporates.
This
is not far removed from the story of Job, but it is more distressing in one
respect. Habakkuk receives no earthly restoration like the rewards bestowed
upon Job for his faith through strife. Instead, he is left to trust God without
seeing the outcome he might have hoped for.
I am
afraid I would require a firm answer about the need for suffering and, thus,
Habakkuk's penny is lost on me.
—Mitchell
Hegman
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