When my family and I get together we love to reminisce over wonderful memories from the past. We had a Dalmatian dog that my brother and I would run races against, my sister and I laugh at the games we used to play in the car on road trips, and my grandpa used to own a forty-foot sailboat on Lake Michigan that would occupy our summer weekends. Oh, the good ol’ days. That’s how the returned exiles felt coming back to the land of Israel after their Babylonian captivity. After they completed building a new temple for the Lord the older generation wailed in anguish for the glory of Solomon’s temple that had been destroyed by the Babylonians. They longed for the splendor and ease of the past.

Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in how the Lord has worked through us in the past; we live off our testimony that occurred years earlier. Or we get stuck dreaming of the future: what we can do for God when the kids finally go off to school, when we finally retire or when the all-consuming time commitment we are currently involved in ends. But that’s not God’s will for us! He gives us testimonies in our past to encourage us in the here and now trials of life. He gives us dreams for the future to give us intentionality with how we use our spare time presently. But if all we do is live in the past or future, nothing will get accomplished NOW. The point of the book of Haggai is to inspire Israel to be faithful to God in their current condition despite unmet expectations. God wants us to live for His glory NOW! He wants us to go and make disciples today, He wants us to be His light to our co-workers now, He wants us to cherish every hug and cuddle from our children today! As the saying goes: Carpe Diem! Seize the day! Today only happens once. Don’t let it pass you by. Let’s live for His glory today and do so in the power of His Holy Spirit.

God bless,

Noree Wegmeyer

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