Before the days of online forms and email feedback, organizations often used complaint boxes for customers or employees to voice their suggestions or concerns. If God had such a box for people to register their objections to the way He is running the universe, it surely would have been stuffed full by now! One of those complaints would have contained the handwriting of Habakkuk, who lived in the city of Jerusalem about 600 years before Christ. This prophet wasn’t afraid to raise some of the most profound and troubling questions about God that you or I will ever ponder. And in the first chapter of his book, Habakkuk gets right to the point. “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and You will not hear?” Maybe your prayers have often sounded like Habakkuk’s. He is frustrated with God’s apparent passivity. The world is filled with sorrow and trouble, death and destruction. Our souls scream out with moral indignation: “This is wrong! This is evil! God, why don’t You do something? Why do our prayers seem to make no difference?” If only God would snap out of His lethargy and act decisively! The prophet is boldly challenging the LORD to demonstrate that He is indeed a God of justice (v 1-4). God answers by acknowledging all the terror and trouble Habakkuk sees, while affirming that He does indeed have the whole world in His hands. The LORD knows that His response will not be what Habakkuk would have expected. “I am raising up the Chaldeans” (or Babylonians), God says. When this violent and haughty nation swoops down against Judah, they will become the LORD’s instrument of discipline against His own people. Justice is coming at the hands of their enemy! These are “guilty men, whose own might is their god!” As hard as it is to swallow, Habakkuk is told that the sovereign LORD is about to punish the sins of His people through a nation of even greater sinners (v 5-11). Habakkuk knows that God won’t allow the Babylonians to totally annihilate His people. The eternal and holy God will surely keep His promises to Israel. But why would God let the treacherous king of Babylon escape divine judgment? How could He ordain that a wicked nation bring down a nation more righteous than them? This is what doesn’t make sense to Habakkuk. Where is the justice in all this, and how can God tolerate it? If He’s going to act, then why not bring revival to Judah and judgment to Babylon? Isn’t that a better idea? (v 12-17). First the prophet was upset because God wasn’t doing anything. Then he’s not happy with what God is about to do. Can you relate to his complaint? For further meditation: