Friday, June 10, 2005

A Prophet and a Shower Door

“These people say, ‘the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’” (Haggai 1:2)

Last Saturday I felt like Ty Pennington, host of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” I felt handy, like a real pro, like a guy who knows how to fix things. The occasion for my new-found confidence with the tool box was the successful repair of a sliding glass door on my bathtub – a job that took less than 30 minutes and cost less than $5.00. Nothing was made over, and nothing about this project was extreme. But the door was repaired and I had a hand in repairing it. Honestly, that the job required so little is the source of some embarrassment for me. Here’s why.

The door had been broken for months. Many months. Not enough months to qualify as a year – but enough months to get uncomfortably close. The sliding door that acts as a “shower curtain” on our tub lost a small wheel. This wheel allows the door to move smoothly and easily along a metal track. Without the wheel, the door is stuck. Luckily, the other half of the sliding glass door still moved easily, allowing us to step in and out of the shower without trouble.

“I’ll need to fix that,” I mused. My declaration was notably noncommittal.

“That wheel on the shower door needs to be fixed,” my wife patiently observed (as the weeks passed). “Yes, you’re right,” I agreed.

But every day half of the door worked just fine, and the fact that the other half of the door was broken bothered me less and less – until after some weeks or months I hardly noticed it at all. Next thing you know it’s early June, and finally we had an open Saturday. My wife drew up a project list for the day, and the sliding glass door on the tub topped the list.

Around the year 520 B.C. God raised up a prophet in Jerusalem. His message was simple. The people there had come home after decades in exile. They had been given permission to rebuild the temple, but after roughly 15 years of being back in their hometown, the temple was not rebuilt. Some years earlier a start had been made, but the job was abandoned for a variety of reasons.

Maybe at first this troubled the residents of Jerusalem – they could see the foundations and knew the job needed to be finished. But years passed. The temple remained in ruins. The people were busy scratching out a living, trying to grow food, trying to survive. After a while the ravaged temple site became part of the Jerusalem landscape.

So God gave a message to Haggai. “The time is now. You’ve tended to your own homes. You’ve invested energy in making yourselves comfortable here. It’s time to get things in order and put first things first; time to build the Temple.”

For many people who claim a relationship with God, the most formidable challenges in the life of faith are not the big issues like “doubting the existence of God” or “renouncing the faith” or “rejecting the church.” These faith crises are certainly real – but far more often faithful people simply confuse life’s priorities. Belief in God is maintained, church attendance and other religious practices continue, but other things take the place of our highest affections and our best energies. The problem isn’t disordered thinking as much as disordered living.

For some, though they hold sound beliefs, their walk with God is in disrepair, perhaps a state of ruin. But we have a remarkable capacity for tolerating this kind of thing. It doesn’t take long for prayerlessness to feel “normal.” Hang around a church long enough and you’ll see what enormous effort it takes for people to establish a habit of weekly worship, and how easily the same habit can be abandoned.

We need to hear the words of this prophet. Direct, blunt, in your face truth about our capacity for neglecting what is central to life. Haggai’s answer to the apathy of the people isn’t complicated – go gather wood and supplies and do the work. We tell ourselves the same lie that the people of Jerusalem bought into: that there will be a better time. But there won’t be a better time than right now. Don’t wait for things to slow down at work. Don’t wait for the kids to get a little older. Don’t wait. The time is now.

Thirty minutes and five dollars fixed my shower door. What might God do with our modest efforts to put first things first?

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