[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 27/June/2021]
The book of Ezra describes how the Jews who had been deported to Babylon 70 years earlier were allowed to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple which the Babylonians had destroyed. When the foundations of the new temple had been built, the people came together to praise God, but many of the older people who remembered the old temple wept aloud (Ezra 3 v 12). In Haggai 2 v 3 God says “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?” God then goes on to say “I will shake all nations and the desired of all nations will come and I will fill this house with glory … The glory of this present house will be greater than the glory of the former house.” (Haggai 2 v 7, 9)
Many of us have been grieving for the loss of the old carefree days when we could meet together as a church without fear and without restrictions. For me it has been similar to the grief I felt when Michael’s diabetes diagnosis put an end to the freedom we had previously enjoyed. I longed for the days when he could eat what he liked when he liked without us having to count carbs, do blood tests and injections or worry about high or low blood sugars. Whilst there is still no cure for diabetes in sight, at least vaccines for Covid19 have given us hope that we can meet together again without fear, even if some restrictions remain.
We still don’t know what the new “normal” will look like and some things will never be the same. I don’t like change, but know that God has to shake us up to stop us becoming complacent and ineffective. God has certainly shaken all nations over the past year and a half. It would be a tragedy if we wasted all that suffering by just going back to the way things were before, even if that is possible.
Isaiah 43 v 18-19 says: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See! I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the desert and streams in the wasteland.”
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Contributed by Helen Ruffhead; © the Author
