Yet I will rejoice
Habakkuk's defiant joy
Habakkuk has spent his whole short book arguing with God, demanding to know how long the violence will go unanswered and why the wicked seem to win. He has not been given the tidy answer he wanted. And yet the book ends not in resignation but in one of the most astonishing sentences in Scripture, a sentence that refuses to pretend. He lists the ruin without flinching. Though the fig tree does not blossom, and there is no fruit on the vines; though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food; though the flock is cut off and there is no herd in the stalls. That is total collapse, the whole economy of a life gone, every visible reason for joy stripped away. And then the sentence turns on a single word, the smallest and strongest in the verse. Yet. Yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will be joyful in the God of my salvation. Not joy because the harvest came. Joy in God Himself when there is no harvest at all. He ends by calling the LORD his strength, who makes his feet like a deer's and sets him on the high places, sure-footed at last on the very heights that terrified him.
“Though the fig tree doesn't flourish, nor fruit be in the vines... yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will be joyful in the God of my salvation.”
— Habakkuk — Habakkuk 3:17-18 (WEB)
“The LORD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like deer's feet, and enables me to go on high places.”
This is Disorientation, where every external reason for joy can fail at once, the harvest gone, the situation unchanged, no good news in sight. The phase will strip away each circumstance our gladness was leaning on. It asks for a stranger, sturdier joy, one chosen in God Himself when there is nothing left to be glad about but Him.
Almost all of your joy is borrowed against outcomes. You are glad when the figs come, when the diagnosis is good, when the situation finally turns, and there is nothing wrong with that joy, except that the wilderness specializes in taking away every one of its sources. When the fig tree does not blossom and the fields yield nothing, a joy built entirely on harvests has nothing left to stand on, and it collapses with the crops. Habakkuk found something underneath that, a joy whose ground is God Himself, so that it survives when nothing has improved and there is no good news to point to at all.
It is worth being honest that this joy begins as a choice more than a feeling, a deliberate turning of the will toward God as the reason for gladness when every other reason has failed. The feeling may come later, or come and go. But the joy, once it has been relocated onto God and off the harvest, can no longer be taken by any failed harvest. There is no loss left that can reach it.
The Church whose joy rests on good numbers and favorable seasons will lose its joy in the wilderness, for the lean years strip away exactly the outcomes that gladness leaned on. Habakkuk holds out a sturdier joy for the whole Body: rejoicing in the LORD Himself when the fig tree does not blossom and the fields yield nothing, joy in the God of salvation rather than in the harvest. The faith has known many such seasons, ages when the visible cause seemed to be failing and a watching world counted Christianity finished, and the Church that endured them had learned to be joyful in God apart from results. That joy, once relocated off the outcome and onto the Lord, becomes a strength no failed harvest and no barren age can strip away. There is no loss left that can reach it.
The wilderness shook away every harvest Habakkuk could name, the figs, the vines, the olives, the flocks. What it could not shake was the God of his salvation, his strength and his footing on the heights. When all that can be shaken is gone, that God remains, and the joy resting on Him remains untouched.
- Which failed or threatened harvest is currently draining my joy, and have I built my gladness entirely on outcomes?
- Can I say Habakkuk's yet honestly today, choosing joy in God Himself when nothing in my circumstances has improved?
- What would change in me if my joy were rooted in the God of my salvation rather than in the figs I am waiting for?
Lord, the fig tree has not blossomed and the fields lie empty, and the joy I leaned on the harvest for is gone. Teach me Habakkuk's yet. Move my gladness off the outcome and onto You, the God of my salvation, until I am joyful in You alone and no loss can take it. Amen.