Rotten Apples and Paneled Houses
I taught from one of my favorite minor prophets twice this week. Once to the youth group, and once to a group of kingergarteners through fifth graders. Which minor prophet? Well, my favorite minor prophet is Habakkuk - this was probably my second favorite - Haggai.Haggai was written around the time of the return from captivity, when the people were supposed to be rebuilding the temple of God, but instead had become preoccupied with their own business and welfare. Until God says to them...
Haggai 1:4
"Is it a time for you yourselves to be living in your paneled houses, while this house remains a ruin?"
Then he goes on to explain to them the consequences of their self-indulgence:
" Give careful thought to your ways. You have planted much, but have harvested little. You eat, but never have enough. You drink, but never have your fill. You put on clothes, but are not warm. You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it."
How ironic that self-indulgence actually leads to an unfulfilled life! One would think that the people most satisfied with life are the ones who are most preoccupied with satisfying themselves. Not so. They are exactly the ones who end up the most unsatisfied.
But we don't seem to know what's best for us, do we?
Later on in the book, the following conversation takes place between God, Haggai, and the priests:
Haggai 2:11-13
This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Ask the priests what the law says: If a person carries consecrated meat in the fold of his garment, and that fold touches some bread or stew, some wine, oil or other food, does it become consecrated?' "
The priests answered, "No."
Then Haggai said, "If a person defiled by contact with a dead body touches one of these things, does it become defiled?"
"Yes," the priests replied, "it becomes defiled."
To put it in more modern terms...if you have a bushel basket filled with good, ripe, tasty apples, and there's one rotten apple in the basket (brown and green and fuzzy!), which is a more likely conclusion:
1. the good apples will turn the rotten one good.
2. the rotten will make all the others rotten.
Obviously, #1 ain't gonna happen!
So it is with our lives. The Apostle Paul said that "A little leaven leavens the whole lump." We can't live our lives saying "I'll just hang onto this little piece of 'rottenness', and keep the rest of my life clean." It doesn't work that way.
But we like having rotten apples in the basket...
We just don't seem to know what's best for us, do we?
So yesterday I was at the laundromat, and I got talking to Millie, and we were discussing how nice it was to have good weather for a change, after all the rain. A sunny day is a beautiful day, right?
"But," I said, "the rainy days are important too..."
And Millie replied, "We just don't seem to know what's best for us, do we?"
Ain't that the truth.
Posted On Jun 4, 2005 at 3:20 AM
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