All of Haggai’s prophesying takes place in a span of less than four months, when the people of Judah had returned from the Exile, in the second year of King Darius of Persia (Haggai 1:1, 2:1, 2:10, 2:20). While Ezra was trying to get the temple rebuilt, most people were focused on rebuilding their homes amid the wreckage of Jerusalem, in the midst of great uncertainty as to what the future might hold.

The prophet invites the people, “Consider how you have fared” (1:5, 1:7). They had not fared well: “You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes” (1:6). They had made it back from the Exile, and it should all have been good; and yet it seems that most of them were barely holding on.

There was a reason for that bleakness. Haggai gave them the word that the Lord had given him: “These people say the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house” (1:2). People were all working on reestablishing the prosperity of their own houses; that was their clear priority. So the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai: “Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?” (1:4). Why were they experiencing such hard times? “You looked for much, and it came to little; and when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? Because my house lies in ruins, while all of you hurry off to your own houses” (1:9) – and God had therefore called for a serious drought (1:10-11).

We’ve all been there: so concerned about our personal situation, too busy to consider God’s purpose within the kingdom. It’s easy to think that first we have to take care of our immediate family, and then we can begin to think beyond our own household. Yet God expects wholehearted allegiance from us, not the fragments and scraps that are left over. It turns out that while it felt like they were barely getting by, they were actually installing paneling in their homes.

As Haggai offered them the admonition and warning that God had given him, the leaders and the people responded, and they “obeyed the voice of the Lord their God” (1:12). And this was the result: “Haggai, the messenger of the Lord, spoke to the people with the Lord’s message, saying, I am with you, says the Lord” (1:13). You might have to wait a little longer for the paneling in the living room: but you can have the presence of the Lord, right now.

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We too have sown much and reaped little, O Lord; we have earned wages and put them in a bag with holes: and we are so slow to see that as long as our priority is ourselves, as long as building our own house is our highest goal, we’ll never see the fulness of the kingdom you intend for us. Teach us to set our hearts’ true allegiance to you, O God!

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