On Wanting More

Haggai 1:5-9 says:

Now this is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.”

This is what the LORD Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build the house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the LORD. “You expected much, but see, it turned out to be little. What you brought home, I blew away. Why?” declares the LORD Almighty. “Because of my house, which remains a ruin, while each of you is busy with his own house.

Seriously. The Israelites are back from exile and working to repair their houses, and leaving the temple for later. Of course, they don’t live in the temple. But to me it reads like the returnees’ focus on their own houses – and the things that go in them – has assumed an almost sacred significance in their work of rebuilding, and this significance has provided the justification for continuing to put off the immense task of rebuilding the Temple of God.

So then the people’s unwillingness to restore the temple causes their work to be unfruitful.

So, are there areas in my life where I’m focusing a disproportionate amount of time on my own projects rather than those that build the Kingdom of God? I feel a lot of the time that my work is unfruitful. Is it because of this, because of some great task being put off, some glaring instance of neglect?

Is that even the right question? I mean, in the situation in Haggai, there is a huge undertaking that is being put off. I know there are many things in the current church that “need to be done” – we need to do this, we need to do that, we need to get up and do something about fill-in-the-blank – but … is the “temple of God” in actual (or even metaphorical) ruins?

I don’t think so. I mean, yeah, I complain a lot, and there are a lot – a lot of things I think need to change. But, under the new covenant of grace, where Christ is the head of the church and that church is capable of (whether most of us are willing to is another question) remaining in constant communication with him through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we’re – or at least I’m – not trying to rebuild or re-attain something that I had and then lost. Instead, I’m “forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what lies ahead” (Philippians 3:13).

And so, what does “lie ahead”? Is there a big project that needs doing? Isn’t it the Great Commission to preach the Good News – that God loves us and has made a way for us to be his friends? I mean, isn’t that the real project now?