TOWARD A GREAT GLORY. “Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory?How does it look to you now?Does it not seem to you like nothing?...The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house, says the LORD Almighty”(Haggai 2:3,9) ‘Did you ever go back to a house you once lived in as a child,only to be disappointed at how small it was?Now that we are grownups,houses that once seemed huge seem more like doll houses.So we can understand the disappointment of elderly Jews contemplating the rather less grand temple planned on the site of the old.Yet Haggai insists that the glory of the new would far exceed the old.One wonders if Haggai isn’t pointing to a more profound glory yet to be associated with the temple that one day would evolve from the one under construction.For when Herod later refurbishes this same temple,it will be honored with an early visitation of the incarnate God.During his life and ministry,Jesus would literally walk on stones being laid during this very restoration.As both a twelve-year-old youngster and later an outraged Messiah cleansing the temple of its abuse,the Lord of heaven would bring a special glory to the temple by his personal presence! Because we ourselves are said to be the “temples”in which God now dwells,we might at first question just how glorious our “temples”could ever be,especially given the sin that has so corrupted them since an age of pristine innocence.While we can never go back and recapture our former innocence,the quite wonderful promise for God’s children is that,with Christ’s personal presence in our lives, “the glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house”. *The edifying question is:If ever I long for the former days of childlike innocence,am I not buoyed by the thought that,in Christ,I now experience the far greater glory of his forgiving presence?’-F.LaGard Smith-
Posted on: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 12:44:07 +0000
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