The appearance of God that Habakkuk has just witnessed leaves a physical mark. 16"I hear, and my body trembles; my lips quiver at the sound." Standing near this much divine power, even power aimed at rescue and not at destruction, is overwhelming, and Habakkuk makes no pretense otherwise. He is in good company. Isaiah collapses before a vision of God's throne (Isaiah 6:5), Daniel loses all his strength before a single angelic messenger (Daniel 10:8-9), and Christ himself is overwhelmed with sorrow in Gethsemane though he knows how the story ends. Trembling before God is very nearly faith's most honest signature. The man who once demanded answers from a distance has had his answer, and it has left him shaking.
Yet in the next breath something has settled in him that was not settled before. 16"Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us." Trembling and waiting are not opposites here. His body registers the full weight of what he has seen, and at the same moment his will has found a steadiness his body has not caught up to. He can shake and still resolve to wait quietly, because the vision has answered the deeper question even while his knees are failing.
What follows is a famous declaration of faith, and it earns its fame by naming exactly what it would take to shake it. 17"Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines," the olive fail and the fields give no food, and 17"the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls." This is total agricultural collapse, every source of food and livelihood failing at once, the worst economic disaster an ancient household could face. Habakkuk names it item by item and will not soften the scenario into something easier to be brave about. An empty orchard does not have to mean an empty heart.
Then comes 18"yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation." Two Hebrew words for joy sit stacked together, exultant rejoicing and glad delight, doubled for emphasis. The word "salvation" is the same root that ran through the appearance he has just described, the God who went out for the salvation of his people. His joy is rooted in what he has seen God do, that same salvation which split the earth and trampled the seas, now claimed personally as the God of my salvation, whether or not the fig tree ever blossoms again.
The book's last line lands as pure confidence. 19"GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer's." A deer crosses ground that would send anyone else sliding, and Habakkuk claims that sure-footedness as a gift, a strength that belongs to God and is loaned to the one who trusts him. This is the book that opened with "how long, O LORD," now closing with a man singing over circumstances that have not changed at all. The Chaldeans are still coming, and the judgment is still deserved. What has changed is inside Habakkuk. It is the faith God named in chapter 2, that the righteous shall live by his faith, now lived out by the prophet who first heard the promise and trembled at what it would cost him to believe it.
Name your empty orchard, the thing that would have to fail for your joy to fail. Say "yet I will rejoice" over it aloud, even while your knees shake.
Prayer
Father, thank you for a joy that does not wait for the fig tree to blossom before it sings, rooted in the God of our salvation and not in circumstances we cannot control. When our bodies tremble at what we have seen or feared, give us a steadiness underneath the shaking. Make our feet like the deer's, sure on whatever high places you have called us to walk, however little has changed around us. In Jesus' name, amen.