READING: Daniel 10:1-12:13, Ezra 4:24-5:1, Haggai 1:1-15
Today, I’m thinking about a lot of people I know – and my heart hurts for them. They’re looking for answers in all the wrong places. They’re living for the temporary, not even considering the reality of death and judgment. They’re seeking pleasures that can never fully satisfy. They’re following their own gods into despair. I grieve on their behalf.
The situation the book of Haggai describes in today’s reading is both quite similar and quite different. This time, it’s the people of God who are misdirected. They should have been rebuilding the house of God, but they had decided it was not yet time to do so. They chose to neglect God’s house and focus instead on their own prosperity. Like the people I think about today, they lived for self.
They lived for their own thriving harvest, but God challenged their hearts by not blessing that harvest. He, in fact, pushed them to think carefully whether their efforts were producing any sense of value and purpose: “You have planted much but harvested little. You eat but never have enough to be satisfied. You drink but never have enough to be happy. You put on clothes but never have enough to get warm. The wage earner puts his wages into a bag with a hole in it” (Hag 1:6).
We who today live only for what the world offers—including we believers who do so at times when our hearts should be focused on the work of God—would be wise to consider our own ways, too. May God show us that anything less than obeying Him can never be fully satisfying.
PERSONAL REFLECTION: What are you living for today?
DAILY PRAYER: “Father, show me if I am focused in the wrong direction.”
TOMORROW’S READING: Haggai 2:1-9, Zechariah 1:1-6, Haggai 2:10-19, Ezra 5:2, Haggai 2:20-23, Zechariah 1:7-5:11
