Wilberforce and the Long Wait for Justice

In 1787, William Wilberforce sat in his garden at Holwood House in Kent, weeping over Thomas Clarkson's evidence of the slave trade — iron shackles sized for children, diagrams of human beings packed like cargo in ship holds. He brought his first abolition bill to Parliament in 1789. It failed. He brought it again in 1791. It failed again. For eighteen years, Wilberforce stood before the House of Commons and cried out against an injustice so monstrous it defied language, and for eighteen years, the powerful shrugged.

His friends urged him to quit. His health deteriorated. The violence continued on ships crossing the Atlantic, and God seemed silent while the wicked swallowed up the righteous.

But Wilberforce had written something in his journal that echoed the watchtower of Habakkuk: "God Almighty has set before me two great objects — the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners." He stationed himself at his post and waited.

In 1807, Parliament finally passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act. Members rose to give Wilberforce a standing ovation while tears streamed down his face.

Habakkuk knew what Wilberforce learned: the vision the Almighty gives has an appointed time. It may tarry through years of silence and grief. But as the Lord promised the prophet, "it will certainly come; it will not delay." The faithful work of waiting is never wasted.