This is what the LORD Almighty says: "These people say, 'The time has not yet come to rebuild the LORD's house.'" – Haggai 1:2

 Today's Scripture Reading (August 20, 2020): Haggai 1

Mark Twain famously commented that we should "Never put off till tomorrow what may be done the day after tomorrow just as well." As a world-class procrastinator, I understand the comment. (Actually, I have tried to change my ways and have worked according to more artificial deadlines in my daily life for many years. Because I know that what I can put off, I will put off.) I think procrastination comes easily to most of us.

It would be easy to write off the rebuilding of the Temple to a case of procrastination. We can date these words to September, 520 B.C.E. That means that the people had been back in Jerusalem for eighteen years. In the beginning, the altar had been rebuilt, and the work on the Temple had begun. But the work had stopped. For the past fourteen years, nothing had been done on the Temple.

In their defense, there were some good reasons for the inactivity. First, the work was hard. What had been easy had been completed. Now, what was left was going to take a significant effort. The work was also expensive, and the exiles did not have a lot of money. The exiles had suffered under conditions of drought and the resultant crop failures. The people of the land opposed the rebuilding of the Temple, and the city of Jerusalem, by the exiles. And the people remembered easier times back in Babylon. The time was not right for a major building program. The exiles had good reason to want to wait a little longer. Waiting was an expedient course of action.

But Haggai wants to call the people on their procrastination. It is not that he does not understand their hardship. He has lived and is living through the same set of circumstances as the people. But sometimes, we need to set our mind on doing the hard things. There will always be reasons not to do the hard stuff. Haggai's message is that the time comes when we must choose to do the hard things.

It is a sentiment that was echoed by John F. Kennedy in 1962 in his speech at Rice University.

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win, and the others, too (John F. Kennedy; Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Effort, September 12, 1962).

I think Haggai would have agreed. It was time for Israel to do the hard thing.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Haggai 2