Return to Me
One Year Bible: Dec. 20
Haggai 1:1-2:23
Return to Me
There is an old-fashioned love story that was based on real-life events. It was a box office hit in the year 2000, yet there is something hidden in the layers of this movie that still make it memorable to me today.
I had a friend who actually had a “Christmas Miracle.” She desperately needed a new heart, and she got the phone call just in time for Christmas to receive her new heart. It was beyond amazing!
Perhaps that is why this movie touches my heart and lingers in my thoughts…
A man in the movie named Bob loses his wife in a tragic accident. At the same time, a woman named “Grace” faces certain death while in the hospital until Bob’s wife’s heart arrives.
She writes a letter to the family to thank them for the gift of life given to her through this woman’s heart. The grieving husband held it in his hands and held the words in his heart.
Sometime later, his friend takes him to the neighborhood restaurant hoping to “set him up” in a new romance. This attempt fails, but Bob is captivated by a young waitress there. Her name is Grace.
The scars on her chest bear witness for the rest of her life to the great gift that she was given. Can you imagine the emotion that came when Bob fell in love with Grace and realized that once again, he was holding in his arms “the beating heart” of his first love? This love had come back to him through “GRACE.”
That is like a parable of exactly what happened to the nation of Israel. They lost their first love and went deep down into desperation. There was no way out for them! After years of rejecting the prophets’ warnings, the people of Judah were taken into captivity to Babylon for seventy years.
In essence, “The Glory had departed.” God’s temple, where His presence once resided with them, was taken away…
Finally, after God freed them and graciously allowed them to return home. They came home and built their own households, but sixteen long years later, they still had not rebuilt the temple.
They had “HOUSES,” but NO “HOME.”
God’s presence no longer “DWELT” in the midst of them.
The “Beating heart” was absent, silent, missing…
How could this be? Why would they let this go on for sixteen long years?
Did they not know how to recapture “The Glory Days”?
They had laid the foundation for a new temple, but no further work had followed that first step. Were they spiritually insensitive, complacent, or just defeated?
They wanted God to prioritize them, yet He was not their priority…
The signs of a people without God’s heartbeat at the center of their life are An Unsatisfied Life, An Unfocused Life, and An Unfulfilled Life.
Not rebuilding the temple was a sign that they had become complacent with Babylon’s affluence, ease, and paganism. God wasn’t at the “Center of it all.”
Haggai’s message to these people was, “Return to Me.”
They had wanted God to RESCUE them, and He had done just that.
Repentance is a “Turning away from something” and a decision to “Turn towards something.”
So, he asks them this question that still applies to us today, “Is it time… to live in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins?”(1:3-4)
He also instructs them to carefully consider their ways, “Think carefully about your ways: You have planted much but harvested little.” (1:5-6)
How does this apply to us today? As we approach a new year, will we “Turn from old ways” and move forward to “new ways”?
Are we busy building our own homes, cramming our own closets, and filling up the hours of our days with temporary pleasures? Or will we “Build up the kingdom of God” and make it the center and core of our being? One is temporary. One is eternal.
My favorite part of the movie was her name, “GRACE.”. That is the story of the Bible. There is a dead heart, and God takes “A BEATING ONE” from his sacrificial gift and places it in our hearts, and once again, there is love, peace, and joy.
Return to Me… That is His loving call to each of us.
