I read something this week from a man in Gaza:
He was writing while the world was celebrating.
The World Cup. The 250th birthday of the United States. The festivity that fills the feed when somewhere, something is being cheered.
He was not celebrating.
He was writing from Gaza.
I want to take a moment to consider.
Because I have been watching the celebrations from Cape Town.
And I have been thinking about what it means to celebrate when your neighbor cannot.
Or when you cannot.
He wrote — I am paraphrasing — that the whole world seems to be celebrating except us.
He wasn’t angry. He was stating a fact.
And it brings me to a halt.
We have been with Habakkuk for three weeks now.
Three weeks ago, we sat with his cry: “How long?”
Last Sunday, we went to the watchtower together.
We are still in the long middle.
Today we arrive at his prayer.
Habakkuk 3 is something different from what came before.
Chapter one was a complaint.
Chapter two was a word from the tower.
Chapter three is a prayer. It reads like a psalm.
And it ends with one of the most astonishing declarations in all of scripture.
But before we get there — let me say something about solidarity.
The man in Gaza is not a stranger to me.
He is each of us.
Or more precisely: we are him.
We are the people of Gaza.
We are also the people being forcibly detained and deported.
The people fleeing violence and hunger.
The people in Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela.
Here in South Africa, watching immigrants painted with a broad brush
for the sins of a government that has failed its own citizens.
And dare I say it —
the people in the United States.
Even there. Even now. People in fear. People in grief. People whose dreams are being foreclosed by a system sinking in the quicksand of its own making.
The man in Gaza named something true:
the world celebrates.
Some of us cannot.
And those of us who can — if we are paying attention — find the celebration sitting uneasy.
This past week the United States men’s soccer team was eliminated from the World Cup.
These are young men who worked hard.
They deserved better.
Not the kind of better that comes with political intervention and manufactured advantage.
A real better. Honest competition. The chance to find out what they were actually capable of.
The tournament was held on US soil, with US political pressure behind it.
The team still lost.
I am sad for those young men.
They were put in an impossible position —
handed an advantage that wasn’t theirs to earn,
which is its own kind of corruption.
Of course, it can be argued that Folarin Balongun could have kept himself out. Maybe he wishes he had.
You cannot build genuine strength on a rigged foundation.
That is true of a soccer team.
It is true of a country.
The empire promises advantage.
What it delivers is crooked.
The World Cup loss feels like a parable for the state of the country itself.
A country given everything.
Losing nonetheless.
We may grieve that.
They deserved better ground to stand on.
Habakkuk gets to chapter 3 having been through the fire.
He cried out in chapter 1.
He went to the watchtower in chapter 2.
He received the hard word: the righteous live by their faithfulness.
And now, in chapter 3, something shifts.
He begins with trembling.
Verses one and two:
“I have heard all about you, Lord. I am filled with awe by your amazing works. In this time of our deep need, help us again as you did in years gone by. And in your anger, remember your mercy.”
He is not pretending the hard things aren’t hard.
He is not celebrating because the world is celebrating.
He is praying from the middle of a long suffering.
And asking God to remember mercy.
⸻
He then looks back at what God has done in history.
The old stories. The trembling mountains. The sun and moon standing still.
He is reminding himself —
reminding God —
that this is not the first difficult time.
That the God who acts in history has acted before.
And will again.
This is what the watchtower does for you.
It gives you a long view.
From the tower you see not just the horizon ahead, but the history behind you.
You remember what you could not see when you were in the middle of the crisis.
And then Habakkuk arrives at the verses.
The ones that have carried this people for more than two and a half millennia.
Chapter 3, verses 17-18:
“Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!”
This is not “everything is fine.”
This is not “God is going to fix it soon.”
This is not the celebration the world is having while Gaza cannot celebrate.
Every even-though in this passage is real loss.
The fig trees. The vines. The olive crop. The fields. The flocks. The empty barns.
Habakkuk truly understands and embraces all of it.
He lists it.
He sits in it.
And then —
“Yet.”
One of our own, Michael, has been dedicating his time as an ICE observer. He’s there to bear witness whenever raids take place. Last Sunday, he said something that deeply touched all of us.
The alerts suck the life out of you.
That is the gusher at its most personal.
Not news from a distance. Alerts. Real time. A family being taken.
David D. spoke to that. He said: “I don’t think there is very much justice in this world, and that’s why we have faith.”
That is Habakkuk’s testimony.
That is the meaning of “yet.”
That word.
“Yet.”
One syllable.
It does not erase the even-thoughs.
It does not pretend the barns are full.
It does not tell the man in Gaza that the world’s celebration should feel good to him.
It says: underneath all of this,
there is something that cannot be taken.
Something that was not given by the empire
and cannot be extracted by it.
“Yet I will rejoice.”
Let me name the even-thoughs of our time.
Even though the Amazon building sits on Khoisan sacred ground.
Even though the woman from Malawi doesn’t know if she can stay.
Even though families were separated at dawn on the Central Coast.
Even though Felice is gone.
Even though Gaza.
Even though the 250th birthday of the United States felt more like a reckoning than a celebration.
Even though our children’s and grandchildren’s twilight.
Even though the dreams were sometimes illusions.
“Yet.”
And Julia spoke to it too — into Michael’s exhaustion, into the waiting room, into the alerts that drain a person.
She said — and I want to get this right, because it deserves to be heard:
“Have faith that ICE agents will be put on trial. You might not be there to see it. And that’s okay. They will be put on trial some way, somehow. And that’s the faith. It’s okay if you don’t see it. Meanwhile, you and others will be holding hands, when you manifest these things.”
That is the “yet.”
That is not escape from the hard thing.
That is faithfulness inside it.
Julia was not speaking from a safe distance.
She was speaking from the waiting room.
Dear Ones,
The “yet” is not easy.
It is not the word you say before you’ve grieved.
It is the word you say after.
Habakkuk earned his “yet” by going through everything we have been walking through for three weeks.
He cried “how long” before he said “yet.”
He went to the watchtower before he said “yet.”
He sat in the long middle.
And then — from the other side of it — he said:
“Yet I will rejoice.”
That is not denial.
That is something the empire did not give and cannot take away.
And then there is verse nineteen.
“The Sovereign Lord is my strength!
He makes me as surefooted as a deer,
able to tread upon the heights.”
Surefooted on the heights.
Diane and I are living at the southern tip of the African continent.
Cape Town has heights — literal ones.
Table Mountain behind us.
The Atlantic in front.
The meeting of two oceans at the Cape.
I have been thinking about what it means to tread on the heights in a time like this.
Not above the suffering.
Not escaped from it.
Steady on it.
The deer on the mountain does not pretend the mountain is flat.
It has learned to stand on uneven ground.
That is what faithfulness produces.
Not a smooth path.
Surefooted steps on a difficult one.
Three weeks ago the question was: “How long?”
Two weeks ago the call was: “Will you meet me at the watchtower?”
Today the word is: “Yet.”
“Yet I will rejoice.”
Not because the even-thoughs are resolved.
Not because the barns are full.
Not because the celebrations include Gaza.
But because this joy — the one the songs have been carrying for generations — was never given by the empire.
And cannot be taken by it.
This joy I have, the empire didn’t give it to me.
The empire didn’t give it, and the empire can’t take it away.
Even here.
Even now.
Even in the long middle.
“Yet.”
So come to the heights.
Bring your even-thoughs.
Bring the grief with a name and the grief without one.
Bring the part of you that read about the man in Gaza and could not celebrate without reservation.
Bring it all.
And stand — surefooted — on the hard ground.
There is still a vision.
There is still a joy the empire did not give.
“Yet I will rejoice.”
“Yet.”
Amen.
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