There are a number of Bible books that I keep coming back to – they just seem to resonate with me. One of these books was written by the prophet Haggai. In this short two chapter book, we drop in on the Isrealites who have lost their focus, they have become distracted. I know I have written about Haggai in the past, but what I want to focus on today is the idea of distractions. I am coming off a five day staycation. We were going to travel, but ended up staying home. I had great plans of spending a couple of days reading and pondering and then spending some time doing things with my wife. Unfortunately I lost my focus almost immediately.
Bathroom redo, new rotors on the car, roof vents, extra shift running a camera at church – don’t get me wrong these were all good things, but they became distractions for me when what I wanted/needed was some time alone with God. I got that in the mornings, but as I thought about what needed to get done I would run to Ikea or Menards, I would Google how to replace a rotor(not really that hard), and sometimes I would just let my mind wander- it goes to a lot of interesting places. This all added to an interesting sermon prep as I was living out what Haggai was warning the remnant about. It was as if Haggai was speaking to me in a way that it hadn’t in the past.
The question that is forming for my sermon is “What is distracting you from your God given focus – loving God, loving others, making disciples, or making use of your spiritual gifts?” Haggai wasn’t condeming the people for living their life, rather he was talking to them because they seemed to have forgotten God in the process.