I've become great mates with Habakkuk.

Actually, we've been friends since 1994, when I first got to know him and a few of his mates. Twelve of them, actually.

These guys always had this stigma about them: they seemed quite small and diminutive compared to some of their colleagues, like big Isaiah. Mockers even use the word 'minor', but I can't agree with that. Every time I saw them all, they were stuck together. Strength in numbers, and all that.

Lots of Christians I know think of Habakkuk as a complicated soul, and perhaps a little too old. They see him as having little relevance to their lives—like an old and difficult uncle you struggle to visit in his nursing home.

But as it turns out, it is often the old peeps that seem to make the most sense of life now.

I've been reading articles all week like this one in the Herald on Saturday: Australia Dragged into Recession. I've been following the crisis all along, although I've never been particularly good friends with Finance, and his cousin Economy. We just weren't on the same wavelength.

But my friend Habakkuk told me some fresh things this week about losing in crisis.

He told me that things matter. They really do. 

He was so upset about the moral and faith crisis in his own day - the injustices and violence happening in his home country, as well as the greed and arrogance of the invading army of Babylon. 

He couldn't understand why God would use the Babylonian army to 'clean up' his own country. And he confronted his God about it. Oh, they were prayers. But they were prayers in anguish.

He could see a great loss coming, but his way to cope was not to deny that things matter. On the contrary, he cared deeply about the world he lived in.

And he also told me that there were opportunities in crisis as well. Opportunities for divine contentment.

After hearing that God will put an end to the crisis in Judah as well as among the nations (eventually), he faced the future with a sense of unease. And yet, deep down, he was given a strong contentment in the face of such a decline.

I know that his issues are not the same as ours, but I can't help feeling like Habakkuk's Song would be worth singing for anyone who has lost anything, let alone everything:

Though the fig tree 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.

There is a further reflection on Habakkuk and Contentment on Justin's personal blog.