In the second chapter of his prophecy, Habukkuk complicates matters further.  He talks about a vision that is "yet for the appointed time," and that is "hastening" towards its goal and "will not fail."  Wait for this vision, he counsels, wait, for "it will certainly come."
     Yet to wait, he says in the next verses, one must have faith.  The righteous, that is, those who have chosen to believe in God, he insists, must "live by faith."  They must live without seeing outcome, without witnessing visible goodness.  They must live, and perhaps die, without ever coming into the vision of, in this case, God's victory over the Chaldeans.
     If we can set aside the theological conundrums (and there are many!) that calling this "God's victory" raises for the thoughtful person of faith, we can learn a larger point. Although we use faith in many aspects of our lives, that is, we daily assume things will happen even if we do not now see firm evidence that they will, using faith in the context of God forces us into much bigger questions:  how can anyone spend her entire life waiting, like perhaps the protagonists of Beckett's Waiting for Godot, for something that never, in this life, comes?  The Chaldeans ruled Mesopotamia for over one hundred years, way longer than anyone, in those times, usually lived.  Thousands of people would live and die, still waiting for a vision that never arrived.
     So why continue to believe?  Why continue to wait?
     Why, indeed?  We wait, by faith, because we believe, not so much in the vision, but in the ultimate certainty of God.  In the end, surety, transcendence and synoptic surety, prevails.
     What else could?