Sunday 5th October, 16th Sunday after Trinity

“The righteous live by their faith” is an important sentence in the Bible – first in Habakkuk (2:4), and later in Romans (1:17), where faith is identified as the foundation of Christian life. As a young Christian, I was taught that faith meant accepting certain doctrines or statements about God as true. As I grew older I came to see that there was much more to it than this.

Habakkuk wrote in a time of uncertainty. He saw Judah’s corrupt, unjust, fractured and divided domestic politics eventually swept away by the Babylonian empire, which was even more unjust and oppressive. Where was God in all this, he asked? God’s answer was that through the change and instability, he remains faithful and can be trusted to bring all things to good. What God asks of his people is a corresponding faithfulness. Not an intellectual belief but a basic trust that he is good. It may take time for God’s purposes to work through, but work through they will.

As for Habakkuk, so for us. Our calling is not just to assent to the idea that Jesus is God’s saving plan for humanity, but to place our trust in him, to rely upon his faithfulness, and to remain faithful ourselves by living out that truth as he calls us to: loving God and loving our neighbour, in spite of the uncertainty, injustice, anxiety and threat. God has appointed a time when his good purposes will be fulfilled: our calling is to watch, wait, and work towards it.

Every blessing,

Roger.