I Stopped Standing on the Tower

Two years he prayed about it, and he could not tell you the day he stopped.

That is the part that unsettles him now. There was no decision. He did not sit down one evening and conclude that God was not going to answer and that he was finished asking. Nothing that clean happened.

What happened is that at some point the thing moved from the front of his praying to the middle, and then from the middle to the end, and then to the list he goes through when he cannot sleep, and then to nowhere at all. If you asked him when the last time was, he would say about eighteen months ago and he would be guessing.

He still prays. Daily, genuinely. There is just a subject that used to be first and is now not on the page.

And the odd thing, which he has never said out loud, is that he does not feel bitter about it. He feels slightly embarrassed. As though he had been standing somewhere obvious for two years waiting for something and everyone could see him, and he came down and hoped nobody noticed.

He is forty eight. The thing he was praying about has not changed and it still matters exactly as much as it did.

The prophet says where he intends to stand

There is a line in Habakkuk that comes straight after a complaint, and it is the most stubborn sentence in the book.

I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.Habakkuk 2:1

Read what has just happened before it. He has asked God a hard question about violence and injustice and gone unanswered, and he has said so, plainly, in the first chapter, in language that would make most people uncomfortable.

And then he does not walk off. He announces a position and takes it.

I will stand upon my watch. That is a soldier's phrase. It means a post, held, for a stated period, whether or not anything appears on the horizon.

And notice he expects to be corrected. What I shall answer when I am reproved. He is not standing there certain he was right. He is standing there available.

You are able to take the post again, and taking it back is not pretending the two years did not happen. That is what the word actually shows in a prophet who complained first, not a rebuke I am handing you, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes a man able to climb back up.

Coming down was not a decision and it is not a sin

Now the kind part, because that embarrassment deserves a proper answer.

Nobody decides to stop. What happens is exactly what you described: a subject slides down a list over about eighteen months, and every individual day of that slide is entirely reasonable, and at no point is there a moment a person could point to and call it giving up.

That is not faithlessness. That is what a human being does with a hope that has had no news for two years, and it is why Scripture keeps having to tell people to stand rather than assuming they will.

And this article is not going to tell you why the two years were quiet. Nobody honest can, and an invented reason would be far worse than the silence, because you would carry it for the rest of your life and it might not be true.

And the silence was never a verdict on you, and coming down was never a disqualification. Scripture puts a prophet on a tower after an unanswered complaint and never once reproaches him for having complained, and the Holy Spirit is not disappointed in a man who slid.

Standing is a position, not a mood

Here is the practical piece, and it matters that it is small.

Taking the post again does not mean feeling hopeful. Habakkuk does not sound hopeful in chapter one and he does not claim to be. It means putting the thing back on the page and being in position, whatever you feel about it.

So put it back at the front. Say the old thing out loud, in the present tense, standing up rather than sitting down, because your body knows the difference between a man at a post and a man in a chair.

You are on the tower the moment you take the position, and no feeling is required to make that real. He promised that those who wait on Him are not put to shame, and the Holy Spirit is the One who holds a man at a post he came down from.