Habakkuk, Sudan, and the Writer’s Responsibility
By Rebecca Bowman Woods
Rebecca Bowman Woods is News Editor of DisciplesWorld Magazine, and a student at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio

Working with the news every day, it is easy to become immune to the gravity of any one particular news story. Still, there are times when a story or image breaks through and implants itself in my consciousness to surface some time later.

Usually, it is during sleep that these pictures, painted with words, photos or video footage, rise again to haunt and disturb me. I don’t enjoy these dreams, but the discomfort they cause is nothing compared to the unmediated suffering of those who live these stories for real. In a sense, they keep me alive, reminded of my ties to the rest of humanity.

Recently, it was the series of dispatches filed by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times, from the borderlands between Darfur, in the western part of Sudan, and Chad, an unlikely promised land for the black African Muslims fleeing the government-backed Arab militias known as the Janjaweed. These “guns on horseback” specialize in riding into villages, accompanied by helicopters or planes, to murder, rape and pillage.

Kristof spent some time with one woman in particular, 24-year-old Magboula Muhammad Khattar, who used to be a wife, mother and sister but like so many of the displaced persons, is now a victim, almost a ghost, a faceless, homeless soul in sea of 1.3 million others waiting to starve or die of disease. He visited her several times, in a spot under a tree that she calls home, for now. Despite the odds against her, she is not without hope.

Her story, of seeing her parents, husband and nephews – ages 4, 6, and 8 – die; of living minute to minute, hungry, thirsty, hoping her infant will not die, has come back to visit me. Even during the day, it does not leave me completely. It is endurance-beyond-patience.

The words of the prophet Habakkuk come to mind:

How long, O Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.

Habakkuk’s complaint was not unheard. He waited at the ramparts for a word. God answered back, not with a lightning bolt from the sky, but with clear instructions.

Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so that a runner may read it.
For there is still a vision for the appointed time;
It speaks of the end, and does not lie.
If it seems to tarry, wait for it;
it surely will come, it will not delay.

God’s instructions to Habakkuk are, to me, a clear signal that there is work to be done on our part in bringing about justice and peace in the world. It is what we should be about. God isn’t planning to do it alone. On the other hand, it is not something we can do without God, the source of the vision.

God’s response to Habakkuk suggests that we must put this vision into words. Write it down, share it with others so that they will understand. It is a task to be done by every generation, until God’s reign of peace and justice are truly present, as we pray, on earth as it is in heaven.

In the midst of great injustice, life-and-death struggles, God says to write. Write the Vision.

I’m no Habakkuk, or Nicholas Kristof. All the same, I ask God for to intervene in a world where evil and injustice are rampant. Sometimes, I catch a glimpse. And so I write….

<<Back to Archive

View for Printing

Contributors
Staff
Advertising
Internships

Send this Page to a Friend

Add Me to Mailing List