Have you ever felt like you were at home when your home was actually very far away? After years in exile, God's people were contemplating home. Home is a disorienting concept when you have been gone for so long. The most recent conflict between Israel and Palestine carries these overtones. What is home?
Today I wandered off into the extreme suburbs of St. Louis, which is close enough to my childhood home state of Kansas. It's the Midwest, and every field looks like prairie to me. I grew up in a large town by Kansas standards. About 400,000 people called Wichita home. But my father was a botany professor (hence the name of this site), and his research often took place in wide open fields of tall grass, pheasant and quail, and creeks and rivers lined by cottonwood trees. So I guess I'd say I grew up in those spaces too.
I accompanied my dad with mixed motives, I'm sure. On our weekend trips, we stopped by the Dutch Kitchen run by an Amish family. Cinnamon rolls in the morning and pie a la mode on the way back through in the afternoon. But I liked spending time out in the open spaces too. And I liked spending time with my dad. I'd wander around a salt marsh studying insects and reptiles while dad studied his plants.
Today, for a brief few minutes, I was back there. I sat by some tall grass and tuned out the nearby highway to hear only the wind, and then the insects. The insects become louder and louder until the only other noise that could break through was the sound of the mourning doves cooing. It was a comforting sound that felt like... home. That was the word that I felt God speaking into my heart and head. Home. Come home. God's presence is my home and I had forgotten, at least in practice that I was made for such a place.
No longer am I the young kid who can sit and listen, and marvel at the wild beauty of a prairie morning. I'm usually too distracted by incomplete tasks and the next meeting on my calendar. But when the rare moment comes that I can do nothing but delight in God, and spend just a minute there, I remember. Remembering is what God's people often have trouble doing. According to the prophet Haggai, they became confused about the home they had been forcibly removed from years before. They seemed to think that it wasn't quite time to head back home.
2 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “These people say, ‘The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’”
One would think that captives would be eager to run home, even if it meant a big reconstruction project awaited them.
3 Then the word of the Lord came through the prophet Haggai: 4 “Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?” (Haggai 1.2-4, NIV)
It is important to notice when you are not at home. As good as the place may be where you currently reside, you know when it is not the place God has in mind for you. Just pause. Just listen. Are you actually one of the ones in exile? Is it time to head home and rebuild something for the glory of God?
5 Now this is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways.6 You have planted much, but harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it.” (Haggai 1.5-6, NIV)
God gave his people a heart-check. Before diving into reconstruction of God's house, he asked them to discern the effectiveness of their ways. If they discerned that their ways resulted in little fruit, a hunger, a thirst, and a lack of contentment, they would need to lay down their own ways and pursue God's way. God gave them the next steps.
7 This is what the Lord Almighty says: “Give careful thought to your ways. 8 Go up into the mountains and bring down timber and build my house, so that I may take pleasure in it and be honored,” says the Lord. (Haggai 1.7, NIV)
Go up high and bring back trees to build the house. From my seat in the makeshift prairie, I looked up and saw a young cottonwood tree barely poking up above the tall grass. It was too small to catch the wind the way a mature tree would, but I heard that sound anyway. The sound of cottonwood trees near water in the prairie is a distinct sound. Maybe God's Spirit runs through places like this to whisper us all the way home.
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