From Kim Williams
First Congregational Church
Haggai 1:1–15
“My house lies in ruins, while all of your hurry off to your own houses.”
The scene: Christmas Morning with four children under 10 years of age. Glittery Santa Claus wrapping paper wadded up around the living room, gift boxes flung haphazardly in all directions, a mom frantically searching for scissors or a knife, and finally resorting to teeth—anything to swiftly cut the various ties binding a Lalaloopsie doll to her cardboard and plastic prison, while a gift-drunk toddler sits nearby on the verge of tears, eager to have the toy she saw on YouTube Kids in her hands. The other three children have mysteriously vanished, leaving behind only a trail of toy packaging and faint echoes of “No! That’s my Nintendo Switch! Hands off!”
It’s easy for us to imagine a destroyed house during the Holidays.
God is pretty straightforward about the trashed state of the temple with the prophet Haggai. Things have been left in disarray, justified away by a consensus among the people that it’s not quite time for clean-up just yet. Haggai is sent to deliver the message to both the governor of Judah and the high priest’s son, a stern and parental message that also sounds very familiar to us — “You’d better clean up this mess before you do anything else, or you’ll be grounded.” With the warning that the people should tend to the temple before they move on to their own home improvements, God also had Haggai tell the people, “I am with you.” And then, knowing the Lord wouldn’t abandon them over the mess they’d left behind, they took to the task of working on the house of the Lord.
Lord, sometimes we are so busy with our own priorities and concerns — and Paw Patrol playsets— that we forget to take care of the things you’ve entrusted to us.
Help us remember to care for your temple, and maybe even offer to pick up the wrapping paper after we’re done unwrapping the gifts, before we move on to playtime.