... for new beginnings...
Too close to where we stand
Just in time for a miracle to come
~@~The people procrastinate.
They say this isn't the right time to rebuild my Temple,
the Temple of God.
How is it that it's the 'right time' for you to live in
your fine new homes while the Home,
God's Temple, is in ruins?
Because while you've run around,
caught up with taking care of your own houses,
my Home is in ruins.
That's why. Because of your stinginess.
And so I've given you a dry summer and a skimpy crop.
I've matched your tight-fisted stinginess
by decreeing a season of drought,
drying up fields and hills, withering gardens
and orchards, stunting vegetables and fruit.
Nothing—not man or woman, not animal or crop
—is going to thrive.
Here's what I want you to do:
Climb into the hills and cut some timber.
Bring it down and rebuild the Temple.
Do it just for me. Honor me.
You've had great ambitions for yourselves,
but nothing has come of it.
The little you have brought to my Temple
I've blown away—there was nothing to it.
This Temple is going to end up far better than it started out,
a glorious beginning but an even more glorious finish:
a place in which I will hand out wholeness and holiness.I am about to shake up everything, to turn
everything upside down and start over from top to bottom
—overthrow governments, destroy foreign powers,
dismantle the world of weapons and armaments,
throw armies into confusion, so that they end up killing one another.
~Haggai (The Message Translation)~
