What Used to Be

When the Israelites, who had been exiled to Babylon, were allowed by Cyrus, king of Persia, to go back to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple of God, there was much joy. This was, after all, the fulfillment of the prophecy Jeremiah spoke during the years just prior to the exile and that Isaiah spoke 150-200 years earlier when God even called Cyrus by name.

What strikes me about all this is what happens after the foundation for the temple is laid. Most of the people shout for joy. But some of the old men, who remembered the previous temple, wept. They could not rejoice in God's faithfulness, their freedom, their return home, the new temple because it didn't measure up to what used to be.

How like that are we today? We revel in the past and don't rejoice in the new things God is doing. Maybe what God is doing does not fit well with our traditions. Maybe it's not our idea of what God should be doing - or how He should be doing it.

How many churches fail because the neighborhood, the demographics, of their location change but the church does not embrace it's neighbors with the gospel of Jesus Christ? We'll just shut the doors rather than do a new thing with new people, telling them, in essence, to "go to hell".

How many times does someone in a church say we've never done that before? Rather than reason to quit, it should be reason to celebrate. God is at work. He even says through Isaiah, "Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?" (Isaiah 43:19)

The rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple was a new beginning for the people of Israel. Maybe it wasn't as grand as before but God was working in their midst. We should always shout for joy when we see God at work around us. We should embrace it and not grieve the new thing He's doing because God's perception, God's purposes just might be a lot different than ours. Ya think?!