Read: Habakkuk 1:5 

The book of Habakkuk may not be the first place you would look for a Christmas verse. Personally, I haven’t been about to get it off my mind this holiday season. It’s such a relevant message for the days we’re living through in 2020. 

In this small book, we find Habakkuk asking God a lot of questions. These are questions that didn’t originate, nor have they ended with him. He believes God. He believes that the promised salvation to His children will come. But it’s not happening. The world is dark. The world is cold. And evil is seemingly in control. So, he goes to God and begins to pour his heart out. He complains. He’s real. To paraphrase, Habakkuk sums up the world he lived in by saying, “God, I’m looking around me and there’s nothing but trouble. I’m doing everything I know to do and you’re absent. Don’t you care?!” 

Sound familiar? 

Pay close attention to God’s reply in verse five, “(Oh, Habakkuk. I’m not absent. I haven’t left. I care . . .) For I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.” In Habakkuk’s day—in an immediate sense—God was speaking of the Babylonians. They would come and there would be suffering. But, from that suffering God’s people would know His salvation.  

In our day we see the greater fulfillment of the promise God was speaking. 

The work spoken of in this verse was the promise of Jesus’ birth, the Christmas story. It was the promise that He would come down to us when we could not go to Him. In Acts chapter 13, Paul references the fulfillment of the words spoken so many years before to Habakkuk in the life and death of Jesus. From His suffering, salvation has come to His people. 

When it seemed like there was no way and no hope – God was at work!  

Jesus came. 

And you know what? Because He came of 2000 years ago, today we live in the midst of the promise. Because He came, there is healing, hope, restoration, provision, and so much more!  

Our salvation has come through His suffering. 

We have hope. 

Everything changed. 

Because He came.