The Good Ole Days???

Haggai 2:3 ‘Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes? 4 Yet now be strong, O Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, O Joshua, son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts,

Haggai had a tough job.  He was trying to challenge and encourage the returnees from the Exile to get excited and get to work on rebuilding.  It was a tough job because everyone was remembering - in reality misremembering "the good ole days", before the fall of Jerusalem, when the temple was "in all its glory." Let's think about that. How many of these returnees had actually been alive to see the original temple? How did they know what it looked like, except by being told?  To be sure, they had some knowledge of the size any beauty and wealthy of the old temple, but had they experienced the glory of the presence of the Lord?  That was the real treasure, and that glory had left Jerusalem long before the walls came down. What really mattered was God's words and the truth behind it: I am with you. Let's never forget that. God wants us to keep looking forward to what He is yet to do, not what He may have done in the past.