Last week, A Word for Your Day, 66 Devotions to Refresh Your Mind released. Because of kind and supportive readers like you, it ranked as a Top Ten New Release on Amazon!

Today, I’d like to share one more excerpt as a thank you. If it blesses you, I hope you’ll add A Word for Your Day to your reading list.

Wait

For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay. 

Habakkuk 2:3

Winter lasts forever in New England. 

We used to say my home state of Rhode Island has three seasons, not four—June, July, and winter. From the first frost of October to the last frost of May, the landscape shivers under grey skies, damp air, and icy blankets of snow. The growing season is short. Farmers and amateur gardeners often wait until after Memorial Day to sow their seeds and plant their tender plants.

Every year at Easter my mother would gather my sisters and me, dressed in our holiday finery, for a picture. One snapshot stands out in my memory. Taken during the first week of April, the grainy image shows the three of us huddled together on the front porch with purple crocuses poking through the snow at our feet.

I’ve weathered quite a few long winters. Some I’ve marked on the calendar, crossing out days with big red Xs as the months creep by. Others I’ve marked with tear-filled journal entries and agonizing seasons of prayer.

A prodigal child, a struggling marriage, or a relational conflict can cause even the steadiest hope to wobble. A long season of unemployment or a loved one battling addiction invites Satan’s icy fingers to clutch at our hearts and squeeze the breath from our lungs. 

Years of unanswered prayers for a baby, a spouse, or a dream rattle the leaves of hope, scattering the precious few that cling to the branches.

When you’re in the middle of a long winter, spring seems very far away. It’s easy to imagine, as C. S. Lewis wrote of the fictional world of Narnia, that it will be “always winter and never Christmas.”

This is why I take comfort in these verses in the tiny book of Habakkuk. They remind me that though God’s answer seems long in coming, it will come.

The prophet Habakkuk groaned under God’s seeming disinterest in the chaos that surrounded him. Evil acts, lawlessness, and injustice troubled his world. 

“How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen?” he wailed to the sky. “Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?” (Habakkuk 1:2–3).

I’ve often prayed Habakkuk-type prayers, asking God, “How long?”

How long will it take for a loved one to recognize the self-destructive path they’re on and repent? How long will the godly suffer with no one to rescue them? How long will people struggle with cancer, or Parkinson’s, or depression before they experience a breakthrough?

“Look at the nations and watch,” the Lord replies to Habakkuk’s question, “and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told” (v. 5).

God reminded Habakkuk that though answers seem slow in coming, he could trust His timing. 

And he could trust that the means God used would accomplish His good and perfect will, even when they weren’t what he expected.

Long before my sisters and I glimpsed the crocus petals pushing through the snow that Easter day, God was at work.

When last year’s blossoms died, He’d already begun the process of rebirth.

All seemed frozen and dead to the watching world. But God was working where we couldn’t see. First the roots emerged, drinking in life-giving water, and pushing deep into the icy soil. Then the leaves unfurled. Finally, the stalk pushed through the snow. “Though it linger, wait for it,” God said to Habakkuk. “It will certainly come and will not delay” (2:3).

Then, one snowy day no different from all the rest, beauty erupted from the ground.

And we marveled.

Crocuses in the snow.

You may have sown the seeds of faith into your children, but the soil of their heart seems frozen solid. Perhaps you’ve planted snips of kindness into relationships that shiver with cold. Maybe you’ve watered the ground with your prayer-soaked tears, but the landscape stretches before you like a polar expanse.

Don’t give up. Believe that the God who is always at work is working for you. Sight unseen. Accomplishing His purposes, in His way, in His timing.

“The Lord is in his holy temple,” Habakkuk declares (v. 20).

“The just shall live by his faith” (v. 4 NKJV).

Trust in the Lord. Don’t give up hope. Wait.

This post is an excerpt from the book, A Word for Your Day, 66 Devotions to Refresh Your Mind, by Lori Hatcher, published by Our Daily Bread Publishing and used with permission.

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