Habakkuk 1:1 The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.

Our greatest frustration with suffering comes when we see it up close and personal.

This brief introduction to the book of Habakkuk shows us that suffering is deeply personal. "Burden" comes from a word that means "heavy" or "load." The same word is used in Exodus 23:5 to describe a donkey bearing under a great load. It is also used in Numbers 11:11 where Moses felt that the burden of all of Israel was upon him. While some suggest the idea of utterance or oracle here, burden is the right idea.

Notice, when Habakkuk looks out into the world and sees injustice and oppression (both present and future), his heart begins to feel a righteous burden. Two things become obvious. First, a righteous heart cries for justice in the face of evil. When David hears of the rape of his daughter, and that some in his family wished to sweep the scandal under the carpet, he was moved with much anger (2 Sam. 13:17). Similarly, much of the material in the Prophetic books is a righteous response to the problem of evil. Jesus Himself shows a righteous indignation in chasing the money changers out of the Temple.

Habakkuk demonstrates for us that a righteous heart cannot sit by idol in the face of suffering. Our hearts should be burdened when confronted with racism, oppression, and crime.

Second, we see that the problem of evil is deeply personal. Evil has always been present in the world, but the prophet wrestles with it now because it's up close and personal. We'd all like to think that we are concerned about other peoples' pain: hunger, murder, rape, violence, extreme poverty, etc. But we generally don't even think about the problem of evil until it hits us personally.

Philosophy Professor Peter van Inwagen writes, "Angels may weep because the world is filled with suffering. A human being weeps because his daughter, she and not another, has died of leukemia this very night, or because her village, the only world she knows, is burning and the mutilated bodies of her husband and her son lie at her feet" (Randy Alcorn, If God is Good, 9).

The problem of pain is deeply personal! There has always been evil in the world, but we don't really take note of it until we find it at our own front door.

Randy Alcorn puts it this way: "Pain is always local." He reminds us that in recent history millions of people (including children) in the Sudan have been murdered, raped, and enslaved. In 2004 the great Asian tsunami killed more than 280,000 people. Malaria causes more than 2 million fatalities annually. Around the world 26,500 children die every day; that's 18 per minute. Now compare this with the loss of American lives on 9/11: 2,973. Horrible indeed! However, the numbers pale in comparison to these other events. Yet the events on 9/11 did more to awaken us Americans to the problem evil than all of the rest of these put together. We dare not downplay the loss of life on 9/11; however, the death toll in Rwanda in 1994 amounted to two World Trade Center disasters every day for 100 straight days. Pain is always local.

C. S. Lewis puts is this way, "If I had really cared as I thought I did about the sorrows of the world, I should not have been so overwhelmed when my own sorrow came."

There has always been pain and suffering in the world, but the localization of injustice has stirred Habakkuk's heart.

I say with much love and respect, if you are not bothered by the problem of evil it can only be because you have yet to experience it up close and personal. The problem of evil has yet to localize.