There Is Still a Vision for the Appointed Time

Then the Lord answered me and said:
Write the vision;
    make it plain on tablets,
    so that a runner may read it.
For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
    it speaks of the end and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
    it will surely come; it will not delay.
(Habakkuk 2:2-3, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

“Then the Lord answered me.”

It makes you wonder: What did Habakkuk ask God?

Some people think that Habakkuk served as a musician at the first great temple in Jerusalem in addition to his status as a prophet—whatever his role, he clearly lived in a turbulent time for Israel. He feared the Chaldeans, “that fierce and impetuous nation, who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.” Because he does mention the temple, scholars date the writing of Habakkuk’s prophecy to the period just before its destruction at the hands of that Chaldean (or, as we know it, Babylonian) army in 586 BCE.

Habakkuk saw them on the horizon, though, and it scared him:

“O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
    and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
    and you will not save? 
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
    and look at trouble?”

“Destruction and violence are before me,” he continues:

    “strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack,
    and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous;
    therefore judgment comes forth perverted.”

Some of us may think we have a pretty good grasp on how Habakkuk felt.

We may be experiencing similar fears ourselves. Certain political movements have thrived, after all, on encouraging people to believe that rioting and violent crime waves are reducing major cities to hellholes—and if we haven’t succumbed to those dark visions, perhaps we worry about their growing influence on everyone else. Many people in the United States have spent the last four years convinced the wicked had surrounded the righteous and perverted justice; others see that happening over the next four years.

Like Habakkuk, we may want to ask why we have to live like this, and how long God plans to let it continue.

To which God replies: Get a pen and paper, and start taking notes.

“There is still a vision for the appointed time.” To me, that sounds a lot like continuing revelation, and that puts us squarely in Quaker territory.

Come to think of it, the Quaker movement began in similarly chaotic conditions, the “world turned upside down” of the English Civil War and its aftermath. You see it in the writings of that first generation of Friends, men and women convinced their society could collapse at any moment, fervently searching for a sense of spiritual stability.

They found that stability through their belief in God’s active interest and engaged presence in their lives—if everyone would turn directly to God for guidance, they said, and nurture the inner grace which God has placed within us, the world could be set right. Contemporary Quakers may not see this in precisely the same Christian contours as our predecessors did, but we remain committed to the core principle of “that of God in everyone,” and in the promise of its cultivation through our adherence to the testimonies we receive through Spirit.

We don’t just pursue peace and equality, for example, because they feel like good ideas—we pursue them because we see them as core spiritual principles that define our relationship to the divine aspect of the cosmos. (And, following in the footsteps of the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, I’d argue they feel like good ideas because even the most rigorously materialist non-believer can recognize, on some subconscious level, the numinous underpinning of reality.) And we believe—or we say we believe—that we can still receive divine guidance. Not just statements recorded in the past for which we can draw inspiration, but direct communication that speaks to our present condition.

“There is still a vision for the appointed time.” Do we truly believe that? 

Or do we fear that we have been left to our own devices, that we’ll have to find our own way out of this mess? Maybe we do believe in a vision for the appointed time, but we worry that it really ought to have arrived by now. God’s advice to Habakkuk applies to us as well: “It will surely come; it will not delay.” In the meantime, we should prepare ourselves to recognize that vision clearly—and to act on it. 

“The righteous live by their faithfulness,” as God told Habakkuk, while “the arrogant do not endure.” Friends cannot barricade ourselves in our meetinghouses and wait for the strife and contention to blow over. We need to confront injustice, not turn away from it. The blessed community does not hide in the shadows. Instead, Spirit calls us to let our light shine plainly before the world, making it easier for other seekers to follow the capital-L Light that illuminates our testimonies to its ultimate source.