So he said to me, “This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the LORD Almighty.” – Zechariah 4:6

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 19, 2017): Zechariah 4

Aristotle once wrote that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” He seemed to understand that there is a mystery about this world that cannot be discovered by taking it apart. There is simply something magical about life. And the truth is that the more we understand about life, the more we find that we don’t know. Maybe that is why life seems to be so hard to emulate. And it is also the reason why life can be so unpredictable.

Zechariah makes it clear that the words he is about to speak to Zerubbabel are not his, that these words proceed from the mouth of God. And the words of God is that Zerubbabel is not to rely on the things that he has at his disposal. The victory was not going to come because of the size of the army that Zerubbabel could raise, nor was victory going to come because of the alliances that Zerubbabel could make. Zerubbabel’s success was going to come only at the hands of God that Zerubbabel served.

This was a lesson that the kings of Judah had refused to learn. Rather than depending on God, they had routinely placed their faith in their political and secular assets. And it was because of this refusal of faith that Judah found itself exactly where it was, a nation in exile. The repeated message of God was that the fate of Israel and Judah did not have to end up this way - if only the kings of Israel and Judah had learned to trust. And if anything was going to change, it had to change at the top. Zerubbabel had to learn to trust in God instead of the things that he could see – and the assets that he had under his control.

This verse has repeatedly been called one of the great texts of the Hebrew Bible. When God is involved in any endeavor, it is God that decides the outcome. In life, the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts, but that effect becomes even more prominent when God is involved in our situations. With God, nothing is impossible – and he has the tendency to multiply the sum of our parts.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Zechariah 5