‘Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? – Haggai 2:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (June 15, 2014): Haggai 2

Just over a week ago World War II veterans from all over the world returned one more time to the shores of Normandy to celebrate the seventieth anniversary of the D- Day landings during the Second World War. The D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944 were a turning point in the war. It once again gave the Western Powers a foothold in Europe, and the hope of possibly freeing France from the grips of Germany. But in the next month almost a quarter million soldiers on both sides of the war would lose their lives. It was an expensive battle for both sides of the war.

So it is not surprising that the seventieth anniversary of the invasion was an emotional time for the veterans who returned to the French coastline. Some of the veterans were frustrated with the number of talking heads that just seemed to want to make the celebration into some kind of a political advantage. Some were happy to see members of other service units at the memorial – they may have not known the soldiers personally, but they knew of the impact that the unit had made on that fateful day. Some were just glad to have been one of the ones who had survived the attack, and the years in between. But the truth is that the number of veterans who remember D-Day get fewer every year. It won’t be that much longer before there won’t be any veterans left, memories of that day will be limited to eyewitness accounts of people who have since died. No one will be left alive who actually lived through the events of Normandy.

The return of the exiles had already begun. Some have wondered if the question being asked is simply rhetorical – if maybe there were no people left who remembered Solomon’s Temple. The return of the exiles started about seventy years after the destruction of the temple. And this writing of Haggai was probably about fifteen years after the beginning of the return of the exiles. In other words, eighty-five years had passed since the temple was destroyed. If there was anyone left who had seen the former glory of the temple, they would have been very small children at the time. And that definitely meant that it did not include Zerubbabel or Joshua.

But those that remembered Solomon’s Temple remembered something grand. And the truth is that because they were young when they last saw the temple, they probably remembered the temple to be even grander than it was. And the temple that replaced it was a disappointment. It was nothing to be proud of – it was simply the product of human hands; the product of what could be built without God.

And what we can build without God will never measure up to what God desires from us. What God desires can only be built with God’s help.  

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Zechariah 1