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You remember the good old days.

The days before every driver had a cell phone glued in his ear. The days when "you've got mail" meant a nice long newsy letter from home, not another spam e-mail for expensive fake-brand watches. The days when ... (Fill in whatever your rose-colored memory brings to mind.)

Our "good old days" memories grow, get reconstructed and longed for in conversations at the office, around the dinner table and at church meetings. Maybe you have said something like that to one of the young people in your life. Perhaps you even mutter it to yourself.

The people of Israel were making these complaints thousands of years ago, just as the people of Maryland and West Virginia make them today. There was injustice and violence and pain and destruction and strife and fearsome enemies. Just as there are today.

They said, "If only things were like they were back in the good old days." Just as we do today. "Didn't God used to take care of these things?"

And they wondered, and – be honest now – sometimes we wonder, where is God? Why doesn't God do something? And why doesn't God do it now? Now is the time.

The prophet Habakkuk saw the same things and asked the same questions thousands of years ago. He challenged God, "How long shall I cry for help and you will not listen?"

Habakkuk pleaded with God, "Do among us what you did among them," – a plea for a return to the good old days. Right here and right now.

His answer came in a vision of God, reviving and making known God's presence in the world. Not only was God on the way again, but God was in fact at work in the world. And had been all along.

Now Habakkuk understood and was ready and willing to wait for God to act, to act in God's time, the right time, not Habakkuk's time.

I have stood in Habakkuk's place and asked Habakkuk's questions. Almost certainly you have been there and done that as well.

I have seen God at work in the world today in the hands of a medical team performing an operation unheard of half a generation ago. My brother has had years of life that would not have been his in the "good old days."

God is present in the antics and bubble-blowing of clowns in a hospital children's emergency room, com-forting and bringing laughter and hope to sick and scared toddlers and infants – and to their worried parents.

God is present with the food bank volunteers and the soup kitchen servers and the youth and their leaders who dedicate time each summer serving in community work camps, painting and fixing up houses so folks can stay in their homes for additional years.

God is at work in VIM teams rebuilding storm-damaged homes in Mississippi and giving hope to families in Appalachia, and in mission teams coming to this country from Guatemala to build churches in some of our largest cities.

This Lent take time to look around. Ask Habakkuk's questions about where is God when we think we need God. Take time to clarify your vision, look and find God reviving the world today in the here, the now.
God's vision calls us to look ahead, not back. God is here, making the vision known in the world today, assuring us that the best of days are coming.

The Rev. Bruce Frame serves Wiseburg-West Liberty Cooperative Parish in the Baltimore North District.