Sunday Afternoon Tea

We're under a Tornado Watch at the moment, which means I'll keep an eye to the sky and plug in the NOAA weather radio. As our highs yesterday were more like May than March, it isn't surprising. Have I ever mentioned such storm watches used to make me hyperventilate?

I went through a number of tornadoes as a child and in my teens, including the Palm Sunday tornadoes and the outbreak of 1974... so fear was impressed upon my soul early. I'm thankful a Watch no longer affects me in that way... I continue to have a healthy fear of WARNINGS.

I've spent my early morning hours living in the book of Habakkuk, a prophet who has issued a warning to God's people. I got the idea that was where God was directing me as I became surrounded by that Book... on the Moody Channel while listening to a favorite Bible teacher, in a book I was reading, and even my dear Jewels' Valentine's Day post (a must read!).

Some of my favorite scripture are included in the writing of this "Minor" prophet (minor meaning short book... not his stature in history). Those of us who are of the protestant persuasion can trace our spiritual roots to Habakkuk and a monk who pondered Paul's writing by this prophet... the just (righteous) shall live by faith (2:4).

I must admit, I had to ask my husband where I could find Habakkuk as it seemed he had gone missing from my Bible (between Nahum and Zephaniah in the minor prophets). I refuse to look in the Bible Index as that would be admitting defeat. :)

I don't believe it is an accident that so many people are being led to study Habakkuk these days. For the questions he raises in the beginning about the world in which he finds himself are the same questions we ask today. I love the way Jewels' puts it... that he most likely did not expect Chapter 3 when asking the questions of Chapters 1 and 2.

It seems like our world is falling apart and frankly... it is no longer the world I remember. I have a collection of gardening magazines collected from the library free table over the years. I noticed the date on an issue I had pulled out last week... August, 2001. I thought of the significance of that month. There was already darkness over parts of the world but within weeks, America would realize the oceans did not separate it from the permanent affects of terrorism... our innocence died on that day and we had no idea that our freedoms would never be the same.

Like Habakkuk in Chapters 1 and 2, we live in a world where tensions from outside our walls are caving in all around us and everywhere we look we see the possibility of calamity... whether from terrorism or economic downfall. We cannot bury our heads in the sand and hope everything goes away when we look out our windows again.

But we can have the peace, knowing God truly is in charge even when everything around us is upside down. He is Due North and we may be at the point already of having to concentrate on Him each moment of each day to keep us from falling off the edge of our world. That's okay for there is no better place to be... no matter what our circumstances.

One of my favorite sections of scripture is located in Habakkuk (even if I couldn't find the book at first!). I would read this over and over during those seasons of life that I had to depend each moment of each hour of each day on Him, holding on for dear life to Due North.

Though the fig does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
Though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will be joyful in God my saviour.

The Soverign Lord is my strength;
He makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
He enables me to go on the heights.

Habakkuk 3:17-19

Let's look at Due North more than Fox and CNN.