AMP – The Lord God is my strength [my source of courage, my invincible army]; He has made my feet [steady and sure] like hinds’ feet And makes me walk [forward with spiritual confidence] on my high places [of challenges and responsibility]. For the choir director, on my stringed instruments.
NRSVUE – God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of deer and makes me tread upon the heights. To the leader: with stringed instruments.
VOICE – The Eternal Lord is my strength! He has made my feet like the feet of a deer; He allows me to walk on high places. For the worship leader – a song accompanied by strings.
God is the ultimate source of strength and power. For Habakkuk, he’s sharing trust in God despite the judgment coming from Judah. He recognizes the loving relationship between God and His people, showing how powerful and faith God truly is.
The imagery of the a deer suggests that Habakkuk would agile, sure-footed, and able to navigate the tough terrain. In the ancient Near Eastern contexts, deer were known for their grace and speed. To connect the picture, we must know that God equips believers to overcome obstacles and challenges. Walking upon the heights suggests finding victory, security, and an advantage over your adversaries. High places were connected to safe and divine encounters. God elevates us above trials, showing us how we can triumph and find His peace.
REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: Habakkuk found the imagery of a deer to understand how he can overcome his trials. What animal do you feel like in your trials?
God equips us to navigate the trials of life with grace and agility. This agility is a gift from God, which helps us overcome these obstacles. It can be hard to discern what’s an obstacle, though. Life can be coasting us through life, and then a door closes. The door could be the end of a relationship, termination from a job, a new disease, or something else altogether. It could be mild or it could be severe. Often, too, when things like this happen – it comes in multiples. These trials can pile up, and cause us immense stress, anxiety, frustrations, and panic.
How we overcome it is through grace and agility. Grace gives us the ability to remember that we are human. Life happens. People are flawed. We cannot control everything that goes on around, no matter how much we’d want to. We need to give ourselves some space and comfort that we may not have caused the situations that we found ourselves in, but we can control how we react and respond. Those ways are typically agile. Agility is gentleness and intentionality. We try to work out all the steps that are necessary so that we can have complete control, but often times that both overwhelms us and often keeps us from doing what’s needed. God gives us one step at a time, and we are called to have faith that God’s steps are good and that we can have strength and courage to take it, even if it’s just to see step two. We have to put all of our soul and strength into these steps, so that we can go through and do God’s will.
REFLECTION CHECKPOINT: Focusing on strength and agility, which animal do you picture when you work towards overcoming your strength?
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