What do you do when the rug is pulled out from underneath you?
A meditation on Habakkuk by Shy Lavasani
This post is the first in a series hosted by UC Berkeley’s TAUG and the Claremont Colleges’ hearhere. In this weekly series, staff writers from both journals will be sharing their perspectives on the COVID-19 global pandemic. Click here for more information on TAUG and here for more information on hearhere.
“I felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath me”. I heard this phrase multiple times on our last week on campus, and with good reason: it almost perfectly encapsulates the feeling most of us felt as, in a span of four days, we went from planning for and living out a normal semester, to being asked to leave campus immediately. I understand that things change fast in a global pandemic, and sometimes quick decisions and rapid responses are required for the good of the public health. But that doesn’t change the shock of how quickly it all happened. Monday night I was playing in the season opener for 5 on 5 basketball intramurals, talking with my teammates about how we had a good chance at winning it all this year. Tuesday night I was talking to my friends about how we would navigate the new limitations on programming put forth by the college in response to the pandemic. And by Wednesday at noon, I was writing thank you cards to friends and faculty, saying goodbyes, and packing boxes. Just like that, my final semester of college was over.
The days since have not brought much better or calming news, for me or the world. We college students have quickly realized that being sent home was a byproduct of the larger problem consuming the United States and world in general. Since last week, we have seen the quickest 30% sell off in the stock market ever, even quicker than what we saw at the heights of the Great Depression. The economy is grinding to a halt, with members of the Federal Reserve thinking unemployment could hit 30%. My dad is sitting at home without work, and I can’t help but wonder whether or not I will get news in the coming days of my own job offer for the coming year being rescinded. Hospitals are packed, thousands of people are dying across the globe, and we’re facing shortages of medical supplies and protective equipment. My mom, who works in the medical field, isn’t provided a mask due to shortages and isn’t allowed to bring one in herself, and is working multiple over time shifts. There are shortages of medicine, food, and cleaning equipment and streets are eerily empty. It’s a weird, unsettling time to be alive.
It’s uncertain times like this where I am rudely and acutely reminded of my humanness. Modernity has brought about technological and scientific advances which have made our lives so comfortable and decreased the uncertainty with which we have to live. No longer do we need to pray for good harvests, for we have learned the science behind agriculture. We no longer need to pray over childbirth, for advances in medicine have caused infant mortality rates to plummet in almost all parts of the world. “God is dead”, the modern man can afford to say. Even people of faith, like me, can oftentimes seemingly afford to forget about God, because we ordinarily have things under control and in our own hands. But this reliance on and recognition of man alone also leaves us in a precarious position for when our abilities fail. We have indeed mastered much of the world, but every once in a while something happens — a forest fire, a pandemic, a natural disaster, that reminds us that we are not yet fully in control. What do we do when we realize that perhaps God isn’t dead? That we don’t have everything under control and need help? How do we respond when the rug is pulled out from underneath us and even the ground under the rug is shaking?
For me, as a Christian, the words of the Old Testament prophet, Habakkuk, provide an interesting answer, and one that I have found much wisdom and solace in. The book of Habakkuk is a small book, 5–10 pages in length, towards the end of the Old Testament, the pre-Jesus portion of the Christian Bible. Recorded in it are the lamentations of the prophet Habakkuk, as he sees iniquity amongst the Israelites and learns of the coming Babylonian invasion and exile. It starts with the prophet crying out to God to lament the evil he is seeing in the world, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you, ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (Habakkuk 1:2). Many times over the course of the last week, I have lamented as Habakkuk did, mourning to the Lord the loss of my final semester of college, the suffering of the world, and the coming economic devastation.
But God, through the words written in the book of Habakkuk, gives me and Habakkuk both a humbling answer that reminds us of our humanness: wait. God tells Habakkuk that he is doing “things [he] wouldn’t believe if seen” and that his answer is coming, he must “wait for it; it will sure come, it will not delay” (Habakkuk 2:3). Though I may be demanding an explanation for what I am seeing, God is reminding me, through His message to Habakkuk, that He does not owe me an answer nor will He provide it on the time scale I set forth; that I am human, my abilities and perspective limited, and there may be a good reason for the rug being pulled out from underneath me that I simply cannot see right now. What the book of Habakkuk tells me is something that I think would be beneficial for everyone, regardless of faith background, to consider: to accept our simple humanity and wait in hope. We do not, and cannot, know what is going to come out of this, and there are only so many things we can do to ameliorate the situation. I cannot change the fact that a global pandemic ended my senior year prematurely. All I can do is accept that it did. This is the basis for acceptance therapy, a popular form of psychotherapy shown to reduce anxiety and depression, as well as a necessary condition for the completion of grief.
What I think the Christian perspective provides though, which goes beyond waiting and accepting, is a reason for hope. For after God tells Habakkuk to wait, he also tells him a vision of a day in which “the righteous shall live by faith”, foreshadowing the coming of Jesus Christ some 500 years later, who in His death allowed anyone and everyone to not live by putting their trust in what they could see and touch, but by putting their faith in God, who is bigger than death, illness and decay. God reassures Habbakuk that though the present moment is bad, He has not forgotten about him, and He is still lovingly working for Habakkuk’s good.
This knowledge allows Habakkuk, in the midst of anxious waiting, to be at peace and find comfort in God. At the end of the book, Habakkuk still doesn’t have answers to his questions and his situation hasn’t improved. He still finds great brokenness and injustice in his society, and the coming Babylonian threat has not diminished. Habakkuk’s epiphany though is that his current situation is just that — current, temporary, ephemeral — but the God he trusts is none of those things — He is eternal, all-powerful, and never going to leave. This knowledge moves Habakkuk to write to close his book, “Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the field yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places” (Habakkuk 3:17–19). I, similarly, still do not have answers to my questions, nor is the situation getting better any time soon. The economy is in turmoil, hospital rooms are packed, my dad is unemployed, and my mom is in danger everyday. I still miss my college friends, some of who I will never again. I don’t know if my job offer will be rescinded, or even when I’ll be able to leave my own home. What I do know, though, is that I have someone on my side who loves me, who is for me, and has all the resources to see me through this storm, and that allows me to get back up even after the rug was so rudely and violently stripped from underneath my feet. And as I stand, in between my toes are no longer the threads of a life I’ve loved and weaved myself. Now, I feel the steady, solid ground of an eternal God, and His eternal promise of love. Though the rug may be pulled out from under my feet and everything may be taken away from me, because I have God’s love, I lack nothing.
Shy Lavasani is a fourth-year student at Pomona College majoring in Public Policy Analysis-Economics and minoring in Chemistry.
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