When God seems hidden:

For even though the fig tree does not blossom,

nor fruit grow on the vine,

even though the olive crop fail,

and fields produce no harvest,

even though the flocks vanish from the folds

and stalls stand empty of cattle,

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord

and exult in God my saviour.

The Lord my God is my strength.

He makes me leap like the deer,

he guides me to the high places.

               Hab. 3:17-19

This is one of my favourite texts that I return to often.  There is juxtaposition between disaster and rejoicing, a motif that occurs often in Biblical literature.  This is not just a literary formula; it is the experience of God whose fidelity is beyond anything we can imagine.

 There was a time when I held onto this text as a lifeline at a period when I had lost almost everything that gave me meaning and happiness.  My sense of God became very dark and God seemed far away - remote and silent. 

In the darkness of loss I asked the age old question of ‘Why?’ as I tried to understand what was happening to me.  I had no sense of God’s presence and no sense of meaning in what was happening.  However, it was here that what was left of my fuzzy, confused head came to the rescue of my heart and spirit.  I held onto the fact of Jesus, his flesh-taking, his life, his own suffering apparently without meaning and all that God brought forth from that.  At the same time I would pray Habakkuk in trust and as a promise that this time of loss would not just end, but become in some way fruitful.

Now, Habakkuk wrote at a time of disaster for Israel, so he knew a thing or two about suffering, and suffering on a grand scale at that.  His prophetic text starts questioning God, ‘How long, Lord, am I to cry for help while you will not listen; to cry oppression in your ear and you will not save?’ and ends with this prayer of trust.  It is significant that he is able to rejoice and affirm God’s strength while still in the time of suffering.  In this he stands with Job and the psalmists and above all Jesus.  Habakkuk surrenders in trust to the great Mystery we call God.

This surrender in the midst of darkness is not a fatalistic ‘throwing-the-hands-in-the-air-because-it’s-all-too-hard’ surrender, nor is it the stereotype surrender by which society keeps people ‘in their place’.  It happens when absolute trust in the Mystery breaks forth as we experience God as the one who abides and sustains and who is the very source and pulse of life beyond anything we categorise or imagine.  At the same time we know this breakthrough moment to be absolute gift.

So surrender is not inert passivity.  Words and concepts fail as a knowing greater than knowing happens and turns this moment into hope and joy.  We are capable of this surrender because God has gifted us with freedom and in turn, the surrender allows us to be free.

This experience is possible and has meaning only because we have been drawn into relationship with God.  In any strong and valued human relationship when there is disharmony and crisis, we hold onto what we have experienced as valuable and life-giving in order to weather the crisis.  This is the ground from which we take the relationship to a new depth because we have surrendered in trust to the other in the relationship.

This is an image of what is happening with our life in God.  As crisis or suffering enters our faith relationship we hold on, wait in hope on God who has shown fidelity to us in Jesus.

I remember one of my lecturers when I was an undergraduate saying, ‘God has one very obscene four letter word and it called “Wait”.’  He happened to be a Carmelite and this drew on that great spiritual tradition.  So we wait in the ambiguity with trust and joy for beyond our expectations or imagination, because despite all signs to the contrary God is at work.

This active surrender actually makes us able to live with suffering and ambiguity that is part of human life.  It gives us the strength and hope to sit and wait.  It does not give easy answers; it enables us to begin, however, minutely, to see as God sees and pick up the life-giving threads of who we are.

And it is in this surrender that the first green shoots of forgiveness and compassion born of new freedom break forth.