Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4 / 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14 / Luke 17:5-10
To come to church every week certainly requires faith. Whether it is a strong faith or a weak faith, a deep faith or shallow faith, that’s another matter.
But it will certainly require faith to come to Church week in week out and to pray for our needs and offer up our petitions.
And we also want to believe that God answers prayers. That is our faith in God and that is also why we keep coming to church.
But we have gone through that experience when we prayed and prayed, and nothing happens, and we wonder how long more do we need to keep praying.
Some people have stopped coming to church because they prayed for an urgent need and nothing seems to happen. They get angry and frustrated and so they gave up and stopped coming to church.
And these people are not strangers to us. They could be our family members as well as our relatives and friends.
And when they ask us why their prayers are not answered and what is the use of coming to church anymore, we are lost for answers. We don’t have the answers. Yes, everything happens for a reason, but the hardest thing is waiting for that reason to come along.
And if they turn around and ask us, “Have your prayers been answered?” we won’t be able to give them an immediate affirmative “Yes”. It is not likely that we will be so confident about saying “Yes”.
But we take consolation that in the Bible, there are passages where people cry out to God, they vent at God, they may even be shouting at God.
The first reading from the prophet Habakkuk is not a stoic emotionless prayer to God. We can feel the tension as Habakkuk says:
How long, Lord, am I to cry for help while you will not listen. To cry oppression in your ear and you will not save? Why do you set injustice before me, why do you look on where there is tyranny? Outrage and violence, this is all I see, all is contention, and discord flourishes.
To speak like that, or to shout like that, to God, it’s certainly not how a creature talks to the Creator.
But when the house is on fire, there is no time to be polite or courteous. Habakkuk was desperate as he prayed, and yet God does not seem to answer or do anything.
Still in the end, God answered and what an answer it was as God said:
Write the vision down, inscribe it on tablets to be easily read, eager for its own fulfillment, it does not deceive. If it comes slowly, wait, for come it will, without fail.
So we have it there in God’s own words, that He will answer prayers, whether they are desperate and urgent, or routine and ordinary. Yes, God will answer prayers and He will do something.
But that would certainly require that little faith in God.
In the gospel, the disciples asked Jesus to increase their faith. And that was because they had their failures and Jesus was sending them out like lambs among wolves.
And Jesus told them that they only need to have that mustard seed faith and God will work wonders.
Yes, faith moves mountains, but doubts create them.
So we have that mustard seed faith to move mountains. There is no need to ask for an increase of faith. Because if faith were to increase so too will doubts.
And faith in God includes faith in His time. Yes, all will be in God’s time.
Well the hot and hazy month of September is over.
We prayed for rain and that the haze will go away. Well God answered our prayer and we are enjoying cool clean air. But we must continue to pray that the cause of the haze will be resolved.
And just a side comment: If we pray for rain, then we better not complain about the mud. It is part of the package.
Of course faith makes things possible, but possible does not mean easy. We must remember that.
So we must persevere and persist in our prayer and keep that mustard seed faith.
Yes prayer is bringing our wishes and worries to God. But we must also have the faith to leave them there with God.
Yes God will answer our prayers. If it comes slowly, then wait, for come it will without fail.
With our mustard seed faith, we will see how our prayers will be answered.
And with our mustard seed faith, let us trust in the Lord that He will work wonders in His time.