Praise Doesn't Wait for the Harvest by Holly D. Sands

One morning while my husband and I were praying, he said something that stopped me: 

"Although we don't have strength, we do have praise."

That's Habakkuk 3:17-19 in a nutshell. Let me back up and set the scene, because it's easy to read past it.

Fig trees barren. Vines empty. Fields producing nothing. Flocks and herds are all gone. Think about what that actually meant back then. No grocery store to fall back on. The fig tree and vine weren't nice-to-have, they were food, income, and trade. No olives meant no oil, no cooking, no lamps. No grain meant no bread. And the flock was the last resort - you could at least sell or eat them if everything else failed. That's gone too. There's no Plan B in this verse. No Plan C. Everything Habakkuk had to lean on had already fallen out from under him.

That's where he's standing when he says "yet."

And here's the part I want to major on: praise doesn't show up after things get better. It shows up right here, in the middle of loss, with nothing to point to yet. Not "I'll praise God once the fig tree buds." Right now. Empty-handed.

Matthew 6:33 says that we should "Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." Look at the order: seek first. The kingdom comes first, and the "added to you" part comes after. His timing, not ours. Jesus says don't worry about what you'll eat or wear and then directs us to look at the birds - they don't plant a thing and the Father feeds them anyway. Look at the lilies, they don't labor and they're dressed better than king Solomon. It's a promise that the Father who feeds the birds already knows what you need before you ask Him.

Habakkuk hadn't seen a single thing added at this point. The fig tree was still bare, yet he praised anyway. 

The "yet's" and "but's" of the Bible carry great weight. Habakkuk says, "YET, I will rejoice in the LORD. I will joy in the GOD of my salvation. The LORD GOD is my strength; HE will make my feet like deer's feet, and HE will make me walk on my high hills."

Notice what he doesn't say. He doesn't say his strength came back. He doesn't say the crops recovered. He says the LORD is his strength - present tense and mid-drought. What he is doing is recognizing Who's still on the throne while the fields stay empty: The LORD GOD was.

I'll be honest, I understand the empty fig tree part of this more than I'd like to right now. There's a door I'm waiting to see open, and nothing I've done in my own strength has made any difference in my circumstances. I know what it is to pray and not feel strong while I'm doing it. So when my husband said, "although we don't have strength, we do have praise," I knew it was a lesson I needed to learn quickly.

Why do we even praise God? Not because life is necessarily good. Not because the fig tree buds. We praise Him because of who He is - the LORD GOD, the Maker of heaven and earth, the One who was before the fig tree ever existed and will be long after it's gone. He's holy. He's faithful. He doesn't change with the seasons. The fields can fail and He's still worthy of every bit of praise we could ever give Him because His greatness was never tied to our circumstances in the first place. So praise is telling the truth about Who He is, whether the fig tree buds in my requested timeframe or not.

When I first started going through this trial, I did not know what we would do. And so I did something I don't normally do. I asked the Lord to guide my hand to a scripture that He would have me know right at that moment. Now, I don't make a habit out of this in case I should to turn to something like "Judas went and hanged himself" and then try again and find "Go and do likewise!" But in all seriousness, I was desperate to hear from Him. So I prayed and opened my Bible and my eyes fell upon Ecclesiastes 3:1.

"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven."

I just sat there for a second. Out of every verse in the Bible, that's the one my eyes landed on. And to be honest, I wasn't happy about it. I even asked my husband how in the world was I supposed to take that? I asked for encouragement to stand and I got this. He actually was excited to hear it which made me more perplexed. He helped me understand that seasons, by definition, don't last forever. 

Oh. 

Does God ever do a facepalm? If He does, I'm sure He did it at this moment. 

But looking back, I think that verse was doing exactly what I needed, even though it wasn't what I asked for. I wanted a word that would let me feel better right then. Instead, He gave me a word that this season, hard as it is, has an end built into it, even if I can't see the edge of it yet. I didn't need to know when. I just needed to have confidence in the One who is Lord over the seasons of my life. 

This is the same posture Habakkuk had standing in his own wrecked field, and the same one Jesus is describing when He tells us not to worry about tomorrow. None of us get the whole picture handed to us up front. We get a "yet" or a "but," leading us to trust completely in the Lord, the God of our Salvation. For surely, HE will come and save.

About the Author

Holly D. Sands has walked with Christ since 1983. She writes at He Is My Song, sharing encouragement and admonition from Scripture with women pursuing Him more deeply. She lives in South Carolina, where she and her husband, Shane Sands, are members of Poplar Springs Baptist Church. Shane's been called by God as an evangelist and leads United in Christ Jesus ministry. At home, they're joined by their idiot cat, Mister Bojangles, whose main contribution to the household is sleeping and eating treats.