How long, O Lord, must I call for help?

These are the words of Habakkuk Chapters 1 & 2.
I feel this very deeply in my soul as I read the news of the little Amish girls being massacred (linked above).
As a father of two little ones I am distraught. What more can I say?

Like Habakkuk, I too, will wait and see.

How long, O Lord, must I call for help?
But you do not listen!
“Violence!” I cry, but you do not come to save.
Must I forever see this sin and misery all around me?
Wherever I look, I see destruction and violence.
I am surrounded by people who love to argue and fight.
The law has become paralyzed and useless, and there is no justice given in the courts.
The wicked far outnumber the righteous, and justice is perverted with bribes and trickery.

O Lord my God, my Holy One, you who are eternal—is your plan in all of this to wipe us out? Surely not! O Lord our Rock…
But will you, who cannot allow sin in any form, stand idly by while they swallow us up?
Should you be silent while the wicked destroy people who are more righteous than they?
Are we but fish to be caught and killed?
Are we but creeping things that have no leader to defend them from their enemies?
Must we be strung up on their hooks and dragged out in their nets while they rejoice?
Then they will worship their nets and burn incense in front of them. “These nets are the gods who have made us rich!” they will claim.
Will you let them get away with this forever?
Will they succeed forever in their heartless conquests?

I will climb up into my watchtower now and wait to see what the Lord will say to me and how he will answer my complaint.

Natalie Grant
lyrics of “Held”
I think of these lyrics when I hear about Amish Massacres.

Two months is too little.
They let him go.
They had no sudden healing.
To think that providence would
Take a child from his mother while she prays
Is appalling.

Who told us we’d be rescued?
What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?
We’re asking why this happens
To us who have died to live?
It’s unfair.

Chorus:
This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.

This hand is bitterness.
We want to taste it, let the hatred know our sorrow.
The wise hands opens slowly to lilies of the valley and tomorrow.

(Chorus)
This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.

Bridge:
If hope is born of suffering.
If this is only the beginning.
Can we not wait for one hour watching for our Savior?

(Chorus)
This is what it means to be held.
How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life
And you survive.
This is what it is to be loved.
And to know that the promise was
When everything fell we’d be held.