Haggai 1:2

Thus speaketh the LORD of hosts, saying, This people say, The time is not come, the time that the LORD’S house should be built.

Timing is everything. The perfect job position could be offered, but it was during a time in your life when you weren’t ready for it. Similarly, you meet the seemingly perfect significant other, but you were in a stage of life unprepared and unwilling to appreciate him or her. The same issue of timing is applicable to the golf swing. The upper and lower body must move in perfect relationship to the timing of other. The hands and arms can move six times faster than the lower body can turn. Therefore, an adjustment must be made to delay the release of the arms and shoulders. If the arms win the race against the lower body, the swing will result in a hook. If the arms are delayed too much, it is difficult to close the face of the club thereby causing a slice. In our lives, we use lack of time to make many excuses for our unavailability. Our lives are too hectic to visit church regularly because of the hardships and conflicts. In the scripture above, the people said the time is not right to rebuild the temple following its destruction nearly 70 years prior. Haggai, who was a prophet, was sent by the Lord to the people to ask them, “have you not had time to build these nice houses, yet you have allowed God’s house to lie in waste?” Further, Haggai asked in verse six, “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes.” He seemingly posed these questions rhetorically because the people would have no legitimate excuse for the neglect of the temple. The Lord then demanded the people to “consider thy ways.” The same questions are relevant to us today. Are our too busy lives and schedule self-induced? We make time for our labors and the things of leisure we feel we deserve, then find no time for God. We have to work second jobs or extra shifts on the weekend in order to pay for our new bass boats or a third “weekend” car. Because of the necessity for extra “wants”, we have no extra time for God. As the scripture explains, we are working more, but we have less to show for it. My father was one of the hardest workers on Earth. For years, he worked any possible extra shift available. However, he finally realized one day that all those overtime hours resulted in much of the extra paycheck going to the government for taxes. Are our spiritual “houses” lying in ruin while we abode in earthly mansions? It is relevant for us each to “consider our ways.” We are sowing much, but our true harvest is bringing in nothing. Let us have the desire to make more time for the “spiritual house.” We feel like failures or ashamed when a neighbor visits our earthly house and it has not been cleaned. God sees our dirty, unkept, and neglected spiritual abode. Yet, our only reply is “ain’t got time for that.”