Contemplative Bible Reading

Haggai 1:6 (Holman Christian Standard Bible)

You have planted much
but harvested little.
You eat
but never have enough to be satisfied.
You drink
but never have enough to become drunk.
You put on clothes
but never have enough to get warm.
The wage earner [puts his] wages
into a bag with a hole in it.”

The last phrase of this verse caught my attention. Putting my money into a bag that has a hole in it.

Several years ago, my family visited the Grand Canyon. My youngest son was about 12 years old at the time. He was carrying a backpack to hold his lunch and water. He was also carrying a handful of small game pieces to a card game he played.

We walked down into the Grand Canyon for a couple of hours. We stopped to sit every half hour and rest. On the way back up we stopped at these same places to rest. At one rest stop on the way up, we found some game pieces on the ground. What a treasure! Then we learned that those pieces had fallen out of my son’s backpack.

He had put his treasures in a backpack that had a hole in it. Somehow we had found what we had just lost.

Our lives can often become like this walk in the Grand Canyon. We find things we treasure for a short while. We think that we are keeping them safe for our enjoyment. Often, however, our lives have holes in them. Our treasures just fall out onto the ground.

How silly can we be? We work as hard as we can to find treasures that merely fall onto the ground. We ignore the true treasures in our lives – the people God sends our way to bless us and receive blessings from us.

Note to readers: you may have noticed that the subject verse is the same one I wrote about last week on December 15th. This is unusual, but shows once again that on one day something in a verse will strike me, then on another day something else in the same verse will do the same.

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