This is my whining, this is my song

I found unexpected comfort in tonight's first Evening lesson

(1928 Book of Common Prayer):

Habakkuk 1:2-4, 12 - 2:4

O LORD, how long shall I cry,

And You will not hear?

Even cry out to You, “Violence!”

And You will not save.

Why do You show me iniquity,

And cause me to see trouble?

Why did you bring me to this time in TEC?

For plundering and violence are before me;

Can't you do something for all the folks being sued by TEC?

There is strife, and contention arises.

Therefore the law is powerless,

And justice never goes forth.

For the wicked surround the righteous;

Therefore perverse judgment proceeds.

Can't you suspend the House of Bishops and cancel General Convention?

Are You not from everlasting,

O LORD my God, my Holy One?

We shall not die.

O LORD, You have appointed them for judgment;

O Rock, You have marked them for correction.

You are of purer eyes than to behold evil,

And cannot look on wickedness.

So I guess you have a "TEC filter"?

Why do You look on those who deal treacherously,

And hold Your tongue when the wicked devours

A person more righteous than he?

Why do You make men like fish of the sea,

or squid?

Like creeping things that have no ruler over them?

They take up all of them with a hook,

They catch them in their net,

And gather them in their dragnet.

Therefore they rejoice and are glad.

Therefore they sacrifice to their net,

And burn incense to their dragnet;

Because by them their share is sumptuous

And their food plentiful.

Why do so many Episcopalians support "leaders" who are filleting the church?

Shall they therefore empty their net,

And continue to slay nations without pity?

Rhetorical question, Lord. Of course they won't, unless you do something about them.

I will stand my watch

And set myself on the rampart,

And watch to see what He will say to me,

And what I will answer when I am corrected.

OK, I've done my praying and wonderfully witty blogging. Now I will shut up and you can address my whining issues.

Then the LORD answered me and said:

“ Write the vision

And make it plain on tablets,

That he may run who reads it.

For the vision is yet for an appointed time;

But at the end it will speak, and it will not lie.

Though it tarries, wait for it;

Because it will surely come,

It will not tarry.

Hmm... your church and you do seem to come out OK in the Revelation...

Behold the proud,

His soul is not upright in him;

But the just shall live by his faith.

Amen. And that faith thing makes a good shield against demonic darts and such.