Haggai 2:3 Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? And how do ye see it now? Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing?
If God Did, Then God Can
I have to confess to being very sentimental. Now this is my temperament, I suppose, but I also have some of the best of reasons. Chief among them is that God has been good to me. I’ve had a good life with a lot of good people and good things, and I fondly look back on these. Of course, it’s also the reason I have a junk drawer full of well, junk. My thinking is that maybe these things will become valuable someday, and they certainly remind me of some golden memory in my past. But if you’re going to make room in your drawer for things of value, you’ve got to get rid of the junk.
At any rate, maybe you long for the good old days as well. You’re sentimental like me, full of nostalgia and wistfulness for what has been. Now, nostalgia has its place, but nostalgia should never be the enemy of vision. Unfortunately, it can and it has. It did in Haggai’s day.
The temple that Haggai and others remembered was Solomon’s magnificent temple, one of the wonders of the world. It had been massive in size, gorgeous in sight, and singular in scope, but it had been destroyed. So God’s people, by God’s command began rebuilding the temple. Those who had any recollection of the former temple looked on the new temple with a little bit of disdain and discouragement. The new temple was smaller and plainer. Their vision of the future didn’t quite match up with their inflated view of the past.
The question was one of perception. How did they see the temple now? Their standard was a temple that no longer existed, and had only grown larger in their memory. Now, sometimes comparisons can be helpful, but oftentimes they can only drag us back and keep us from moving forward.
In Haggai 2:4 God says, “…Yet now be strong… all ye people of the land…and work: for I am with you.” I love that. If you remember nothing else, remember that: “work: for I am with you.” It’s God’s work. We’re His servants and He wants to do what needs to be done through us.
Some people try to run from their past, and some people are stuck back there voluntarily. Allow the past to encourage you that God can, and not convince you that God won’t. If God did, then God can. Remember that God’s work is God’s, not yours. The temple was God’s house but what was most important was not the house, it was the God that inhabited it. The temples no longer remain, but God does. Thank God for His working in the past, be encouraged by it, and forge on into the future remembering that God is with you when you’re with Him.