Now here is a strange question: "Where is your wicker basket?" Why do I ask? Well simply because of a dream. I usually have some Doozies, but this one was one that I really enjoyed and would have liked to go back to sleep for. Simply for the fact that I went to heaven. The dream started out with something happening and all the sudden I was needing to board a plane to heaven.

I must have died. Well I got my boarding pass, which looked something like a compass and had to go to the ticket booth - which looked something like a passport terminal. There was a nice gentleman that was getting his ticket and after he left, he realized that he forgot something and got back in line. Three people were ahead of him. Each taking longer than normal and the man was getting very frustrated and angry. By the time he got to the ticket counter, he found out because of his attitude that he was going to have to take another flight. I guess you have to check your attitude before you get on the flight to heaven.

Then all the sudden the scene changed and I was on the flight. I remember looking back and seeing a rear window,Kind of like a cars rear window and I was going vertically up towards the sky. It was like the earth was moving away from me. It put a knot in my chest - you could say that it scared me to death. Well if I wasn't dead already anyway. On the way, we were going on all sorts of roads and all of them looked like mother of pearl slides that went in all kinds of different directions. Kind of like the MC Escher painting of the stairs. Then finally we got there.

Next thing I know is that I was being told to go to an area to put my stuff. I had a backpack full of stuff that I must have brought along with me. I am not sure what was in the bag all I know is that it was everything that I had. I guess they were telling me that, that I didn't have to carry around my baggage anymore. I had a place to stay. A gentleman told me that I had the area 23S which happened to be right accross from my Pastor - Dr. Young in 22G. The area with the designated spots remided me of the spa and sauna area that Chaundra and I used at the resort in Lost Pines recently. I looked at the little hole in the wall and wondered to myself is there like a whole room in that little hole. After all we were in heaven and anything was possible. As I looked it was a little wicker basket. I was supposed to sit my backpack in it and start enjoying heaven.

This is when I woke up. Darn that waking! I was going to get to find out what heaven was like and I didn't get my chance. So the moral of the story is: "I don't know! After all it was just a Dream!" Just kidding, I think that it was saying that we don't have to carry around our burdens anymore. God made a way. We pack our bags, but He has a place for them. So if these burdens are like sin, we won't need them anymore. So I will leave you with some scripture:

22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement,[a] through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. -Romans 3:22-26

So I guess I will ask the question again: "Where is your wicker basket?" Is it your back? Are you carrying around your burdens or sins? Or is it in a hole in the wall where you don't have to carry them around anymore? God made a way! The flight is ready, you just have to get on board. The ticket is Jesus and just like the compass he will show you the way. All you have to do is believe in him and the sacrifice that he gave to get us to God. I hope you have your ticket.

And this concludes this episode of "What Scott Dreams." Turn in next week for another exciting epi... well maybe your never know. God Bless!

Everyone at some point in their life has asked God the question, “Why?” Some have used it to question the very existence of God, while others have drawn closer to God because of it. Habakkuk is a prophetic book that was written on behalf of these people. Most people when they think of prophecy they think of "Foretelling" of the future. While this is an aspect of prophecy it also means to forthtell. In other words it has a message for the day it is spoken and it might have a future meaning as well. Mostly it is more like a proclomation of some sort. God rises his people up to warn and turn them back to Him. While most prophets called the people to God, Habakkuk questioned God for the people. He could not understand why the poor were afflicted and mistreated. He could not understand why a nation more wicked than Israel would be used to judge God’s people. His question of “Why?” shows us that we can be true to God and still question Him in our doubt.

Well who was he:
Gleason L. Archer states, “The name Habaqquq is an unusual one of uncertain meaning; possibly it signified ardent embrace, from hābaq, embrace (Eiselen in ISBE). Some have suggested that it was a name of a garden plant which the Assyrians called hambaqūqu, but which cannot as yet be identified.” [1] However, even with the Assyrian conquest of Israel, it does not seem to make sense for a Judean prophet to be named after an Assyrian plant. Judea was never conquered by the Assyrians and while they may have had some influence, it doesn't seem to fit well. What does make sense is the use of his name with the idea of embracing God, especially in a time this was needed the most.

Little is really known about Habakkuk himself. There is some speculation that he was from the tribe of Simeon, and some have suggested he is a Levite. Clyde T. Francisco stated, “According to another such work, Lives of the Prophets, he was a man of the tribe of Simeon who fled upon Nebuchadnezzar’s advance to take Jerusalem (587) but returned after the fall, dying two years before the return from captivity.”[2] Bel and the Dragon places him in the tribe of Levi. The Jewish encyclopedia online states, “The title to the Septuagint text reads: ‘From the prophecy of Habakkuk, the son of Jesus [Joshua], of the tribe of Levi.’ There was in existence, probably, a work ascribed to Habakkuk; but of its nature nothing is known.”[3] If more than one source had put his heritage with a specific tribe, historians would have more clues about his genealogy. While Bel and the Dragon and Lives of the Prophets are not canonical books, they may shed some light on Habakkuk’s origins. Either way, we cannot know for certain.

Another reason that people have placed Habakkuk with the tribe of Levi is because of the musical aspects of chapter 3. Frank Boyd states, “From 3:1 and 3:19 we gather that he may have been a Levite participating in the music of the Temple.”[4] Robert Pfeiffer, uses the musical aspects of the chapter as an argument against Habakkuk’s authorship of chapter three. Pfeiffer does not believe that chapter three should be attributed to Habakkuk, because he was a prophet and not a musician. By stating this, however, he has limited the abilities of people to be able to do only one thing with any excellence, and that is a fallacy. Who is he to say that someone cannot be a king or a prophet and be musically inclined as well? The argument just doesn’t work.
So what does this mean? It means that we don't really know that much about him and we cannot know for certain without more evidence. Most of what we know is based off of speculation. The one thing that I do know is that he wrote this book. In Chapter 1 verse 1 of Habakkuk, it states: "The Oracle that Habakkuk the prophet recieved." I also know that he had a heart for his nation. Why else would he be questioning God about wickedness and injustice. I do know that he had a heart for God as well, after all he waited for his answer and didn't give up that God would speak to him on the matter. He also showed this in the third chapter as he was giving thanks to God even with knowing the destruction that was coming on Jerusalem.

Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior. -Habakkuk 3: 16b-18

I know that he is every man/woman. Meaning that he is just like you and me. He couldn't understand why things were the way they were, just like many times we have asked this same question: "Why?" We can be comforted in the fact that God loves us even in our Doubt. We can be comforted with the fact that God loves us when we ask Him questions, and He is willing to answer us if we are truly seeking an answer. We can be comforted in the fact that even in our times of trouble, He cares! We can be comforted in the fact that He is a just God and when things don't seem fair, He has a plan. We can be comforted in the fact that if we are being disciplined, that He will see us through it. God does Care!


[1] Gleason L. Archer, A Survey of Old Testament Introduction (Chicago: Moody Press, 1974), 355.
[2] Clyde T. Francisco, Introducing the Old Testament (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1958), 138.
[3] Crawford Howell Toy, "Bel And The Dragon," Jewish Encyclopedia, 2002, http://jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=561&letter=B/ (accessed April 26, 2008).
[4] Frank M. Boyd, Old Testament Studies, ed. , Joel Through Malachi (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1988), 153.

Recently a friend of mine showed this video to me. It is a sad thing, but at the same time shows (I believe - including me) "how and what" many of us Christians believe about sin. The video talks about how this kid stole his grandmother's SUV because he was mad at her. We get so mad at God at times and "get back" at him by doing something that we shouldn't, or at times just out of flat rebellion we sin. The boy in the video said that "it was fun to do bad things." We all know how sin can be fun for a season but someone can really get hurt - mostly we hurt ourselves. The sad thing is that he was asked what kind of punishment he should get and he replied "maybe a weekend without video games." WOW a whole weekend. Yet this is what we want life to be like many times. We want to get off easy or have no punishment at all. I believe God is gracious to us at times but he also says, "Pride comes before the fall."



This is the times that we live in. We watch evil everyday and wonder why God doesn't step in and put a stop to it. We see murder on the news, violence on TV, Pornography is too easy to access, Spouse and Child abuse. We see and ask questions just like Habakkuk. "Why do you make me look at evil and injustice? Why don't you do something? The real questions is do we really want Him to. He may just use the same kind of tact that he did with Israel. Would be ready for something like this?

I have been out of the loop for a little while and want to start getting back to this study, but I thought this might be something to discuss in the meantime. To be honest, it has been easy to get out of my study habits and this is what happened this time. Now I need to get back to the questions at hand. Why is Habakkuk important to our day and time - one answer is, "I think we are living in perilous times and we wonder why God doesn't seem to do anything about it." He will! We just don't know what and how he will deal with it.

This last semester I took an Old Testament Survey class at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. It was the second class and was on the poetry and prophetic books. One of the assignments I had to do was to write a paper on something that related to the class. So I chose the Book of Habakkuk. It is interesting that a book that when I said to some people I was going to do a paper on him they asked, "WHO!" However I found the book very interesting and it has aspects that many people would gain from reading it.

The name Habakkuk actually comes from a word very similar to the Hebrew word for "embrace." However, they are really not sure about its meaning, but they do have a consensus that this is the right meaning. I thought that since my Blog name is "Embracing God" that it would be a good study to put online for those who would like to know more.

Habakkuk is actually broken down into three discourses and I will discuss these in other Blog posts, but the interesting thing about Habakkuk is his willingness to question God about the evil and suffering in the world. It is said that this book is very similar to Job in the fact that it faces God with evil and suffering in the world. It is called Theodicy and is a question that many people struggle with. For some tragedy brings them closer to God, while for others it takes them further away from Him. That is why a study of this book is so important.

The book itself is not only about Theodicy, but also it is about God's sovereignty and human doubt. God has a reason for everything that happens, and to touch on it would take many posts to do it justice. The study theodicy is a book in of itself with many theories. I will touch on some of these, as necessary, but want to concentrate on the book of Habakkuk for now.

Dr. Chen, my professor, stated that you cannot fully understand the prophetic books unless you know the history of what was taking place at the time it was written. Unfortunately there is a lot of contention about the date on most of the books, but with a thorough study, a researcher can find an agreeable date of authorship. I will discuss the Authorship, History, the (3) Discourses and some of the critical views as well. Hopefully those who study it along side of me will also learn to better embrace God and strengthen their walk with Him as well.