Reflecting in Prayer

By Rev Emma Nicholls, Community Life Uniting Church

“Consider your ways.” (Haggai 1:5) There are seasons when you can be working incredibly hard, and yet still wonder what you have to show for it.

I know that feeling. After the first three years in my congregation, I had come a long way from being bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. The learning curve of leadership was steep, and the responsibilities seemed endless. I was working harder than I ever had, and yet was beginning to feel hamstrung by the demands of simply keeping things going.

Then, over lunch one day, a colleague asked me a question I wasn’t expecting: ‘How many people have become new Christians at your church, in the last three years?’

I knew the answer immediately – zero. It was an uncomfortable answer. Not because of a lack of effort - I knew I had been doing a lot and doing it well. We were growing in many other ways. But the question stuck in my heart like a burr. Somewhere along the way, I knew as a leader, I had become more focused on keeping things going, than imagining new ways to engage people with faith.

In Haggai 1, the prophet Haggai similarly invites honest reflection of the people who had returned to Jerusalem after the exile. Their temple had been destroyed, and although they had initially tried to rebuild, opposition from neighbouring people shook their confidence, and they felt discouraged and afraid (see Ezra 4). So, they turned their attention to other projects: their homes, farms and livelihoods.

Haggai essentially asks them, ‘How’s this all going for you?’

The answer is, ‘Not very well.’ Despite all their hard work, there is little to show for it. Their crops yield little, their harvest is pitiful, and nothing seems to satisfy them anymore. They are just spinning their wheels.

Haggai points to the temple lying in ruins, and asks, ‘Why aren’t you working on God’s house?’ The people say, ‘The time is not right yet.’ It’s an understandable response. For this community, so much had changed. Perhaps the energy it would take to rebuild not only the physical temple, but their deep sense of collective identity - in the midst of opposition - was too much to bear.

It’s a feeling we can relate to. When we are discouraged and tired, it’s often easier to put our energy into what feels safe and practical. But Haggai sees more for God’s people. He proclaims God’s encouragement - ‘I am with you, says the Lord.’ (Haggai 1:13). God stirs up their spirits. And the people pick up the tools and start building the house of God, again.

As I reflect on the ways I have seen God bringing new growth in our congregation in the past year, it fills me with hope. God is still stirring His people. There are still new possibilities before us.

But we must not miss this opportunity to reflect. Haggai’s question invites us into honest prayer before God. We sit with the question – how are things really going? What have we become so busy maintaining, that we have stopped looking to the new things God is doing amongst us?

As we do, we may allow God to search our hearts, and to reveal where we have drifted from God’s purposes. And we may hear the promise afresh: ‘I am with you, says the Lord.’