Contemplative Bible Reading

Haggai 2:15-19 (New International Version 2010)

¹⁵ “‘Now give careful thought to this from this day on—consider how things were before one stone was laid on another in the LORD’s temple. ¹⁶ When anyone came to a heap of twenty measures, there were only ten. When anyone went to a wine vat to draw fifty measures, there were only twenty. ¹⁷ I struck all the work of your hands with blight, mildew and hail, yet you did not return to me,’ declares the LORD. ¹⁸ ‘From this day on, from this twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, give careful thought to the day when the foundation of the LORD’s temple was laid. Give careful thought: ¹⁹ Is there yet any seed left in the barn? Until now, the vine and the fig tree, the pomegranate and the olive tree have not borne fruit.

“‘From this day on I will bless you.’”

Consider the items mentioned in these verses,

• a wine vat
• blight
• mildew
• hail
• seed
• vine
• fig tree
• pomegranate
• olive tree

These don’t mean much to me today. I live in the information age; I work on the fourth floor of a building that has a constant temperature the year round. We have running water and microwave ovens everywhere. I don’t even have to climb stairs as we have a machine that takes us up and down.

What do I care about a little mildew?

Haggai’s audience in these verses cared a lot about mildew as it could destroy their stores of food. The result would be death. These people lived in an agricultural world. They lived closer to nature, and they noticed things that my contemporaries and myself take for granted. They noticed the blessings of God much more than I do.

I live in a complex world. We have a global economy that works. Drought in California this year? No problem. We’ll buy strawberries grown in China and brought to us on refrigerated ships. I just don’t know how we would survive the year without fresh strawberries. We’ve taken care of all these things with our technology and diplomacy. We are so smart. Blessings from God? We don’t need those. That is such a silly, ancient concept.

Well, maybe not. Our information age works because a technician at a power-generating plant shows up for work. If this technician, a low-paid fellow, can’t go to work, the lights go out and we return to concern about mildew on the sack of potatoes because all the food in our refrigerator spoiled and water just stopped coming out of the faucet.

I live closer to God than I like to pretend. I depend on His blessings far more than I realize. The following short prayer may sound silly, but I mean it with all my heart.

God, thank you for getting that technician at the power plant to work everyday.