I’m leading a women’s Bible study right now on Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Here are my personal reflections on Haggai 1:
When I was asked to teach a class for a women’s ministry at my church called Mom’s Equipped, my first response (other than shock) was that I had never taught a class before. My second response was that I really didn’t think I would have the time. I had just committed to being the coordinator for the church nursery, and we were trying to buy a house. I figured we’d be right in the middle of moving when the class was to start. I didn’t want to take on too much. But God had other ideas…
I imagine that in Haggai 1 the exiles who had returned from Babylon felt that they did not have time to build the temple. After all, they were struggling with financial problems and poor crop yields due to drought. Surely they needed to spend more time working harder just to survive, so that they wouldn’t be putting their little ones to bed hungry. “It would be nice to devote more time to the things of God, but first we need to put food on the table. If God would just bless our crops, then we would have more time.” As Tevye sings in Fiddler on the Roof’s “If I Were a Rich Man”:
“If I were rich, I’d have the time that I lack
To sit in the synagogue and pray
And maybe have a seat by the Eastern wall
And I’d discuss the holy books with the learned men,
Several hours every day.”
But then God spoke to the returned exiles through the prophet Haggai, and stopped that line of thinking dead in its tracks. The drought and financial problems they had been experiencing had been a sign from God. It was a wake up call. It was time to readjust their priorities and make the time to rebuild God’s temple.
When God told me that he was calling me to teach the class, I began to think, “Okay, I don’t have much time. How can I do this realistically?” I thought of doing a Bible study on Joshua that I had participated in at a previous church; I still had the book it was based on and all my notes. But God said no. Okay, how about studying some of the Letters of John Newton (again, a study from a previous church). God said no. Then what? It had to be something easy, with little preparation time. I had been reading through a chronologically-organized Bible and really loved the section on the rebuilding of the temple where the prophets Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi are interwoven into the historical books of Ezra and Nehemiah. How about that, God? He said yes! Hurray! Now all I had to do was find a Bible study book on those prophets and I’d be set, right? Wrong. I quickly discovered that there are almost no Bible study books available on those prophets, and the main one that I found was by an author whose writing style I didn’t care for. But I was willing to sacrifice my preferences if that was what God wanted (how noble of me!), so I prayed about it. God said no. What?! Was he expecting me to come up with a Bible study from scratch?! Yes. That’s exactly what he was expecting. “But God, I don’t have time!!”
“Go up into the mountains and bring down timber…” (Haggai 1:8). God expected the hard labor to begin. And so I began to carve out little bits of preparation time during the day. As I obeyed, God blessed me with more bits of time. Then he sent my mother to stay with us for an unexpectedly extended visit due to health problems. She has helped tremendously by watching my 2-year-old and cooking and washing dishes. As it turned out, God’s expectations were not too much, and he provided me with the time I needed.
We did end up opening escrow on a house the week of the first class. The day before the first class was filled with house inspections and piles of paperwork, and I could hardly think straight. But the class turned out okay. Now it’s the morning of the second class, and I’m sick and losing my voice. How am I supposed to teach the class? But maybe that’s the point. Maybe God is having me lose my voice so that I won’t talk too much in class, because it’s not my class. God called me and he chose the topic, so it’s his class.
It has not necessarily been easy so far, but God has provided. When the Israelites obeyed and began to rebuild the temple again in Haggai 1, it must have been very hard work with very few resources. But in just a few months’ time, God will begin to bless their crops again (Haggai 2:15-19). And within a year or so, he will shower them with abundant resources from the Persian emperor for all the expenses needed to rebuild the temple (Ezra 6:8-10). The obedience and hard work came first, but the blessings followed.
Facing Jordan 