Wish you could see
Wish you could know
Can you hear My voice
Through the winter cold?

Matt Hammitt, “Even Though”

Almost ten Decembers ago, through the winter cold, I heard a verse I’d never heard before from a book in the Bible I don’t think I’d ever heard of either. Our pastor asked our family to read this verse and light the candle on the Advent wreath at the start of the service one week. My husband read Habakkuk 3:17-19:

17 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,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior.

19 The Sovereign Lord is my strength;
    he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
    he enables me to tread on the heights.

The service was about six weeks after Cody’s epilepsy diagnosis, six weeks of walking in a fog from the diagnosis itself as well as lack of sleep from listening for nighttime seizures. (And it just dawned on me that the pastor maybe chose us to read this verse because of our new reality…I’m a little slow sometimes…)

Regardless of the intention behind it, I heard this verse and it grabbed me:

yet I will rejoice in the Lord…”