by Alanna

[the past two weeks, I've felt like this...]

"How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and You will not hear? I cry out to You, "Violence!" yet You do not save."

"Are you not from everlasting, O Lord, my God, my Holy One?...Your eyes are too pure to approve evil, and You can not look on wickedness with favor. Why do You look with favor on those who deal treacherously? Why are You silent when the wicked swallow up those more righteous than they?"

(Habakkuk 1:2, 12a, 13)

[good friends have been telling me things like this....]

"You turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made would say to its maker, "He did not make me"; or what is formed say to him who formed it, "He has no understanding"?

(Isaiah 29:16)

[i read lots in isaiah about judgment and wrath and death, and also in a seemingly contradictory and yet strangely comforting way, how God would be this...]

"For You have been a defense for the helpless, a defense for the needy in his distress, a refuge from the storm, a shade from the heat"

(Isaiah 25:4)

[someday...]

"And it will be said in that day, "Behold, this is our God for whom we have waited that He might save us. This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us rejoice and be glad in His salvation."

(Isaiah 25:9)

[until then...despite all the confusion and doubts and fears and unbelief, i long to say this....]

"Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds' feet, and makes me walk on my high places."

Habakkuk 3:17-19