The Building My Grandparents Prayed In

His grandmother prayed in that room and so did hers.

Same floor. Same windows, which have been replaced twice and put back the same shape both times because nobody could face changing them. Same door that has stuck in the wet since before anybody alive can remember.

He knows what it sounded like in the sixties because the older ones told him, over and over, in the way that families do, until he can hear a thing he was never present for.

It sounded like a room full of people.

There are fourteen now. Eleven if it is raining.

And he is not a man who despises the fourteen, and I would not print this if he were. He would carry every one of them on his back and two of them he has, more or less.

The trouble is a specific thing that happens to him when he is standing in it, and he has never described it to anybody.

The silence in that room does not feel like a room that is quiet.

It feels like a room that used to be loud. Those are two completely different silences and only one of them has an accusation in it, and the one in that hall has been getting louder for about twelve years.

So let me ask you.

Who prayed in your building before you, and what did it sound like then?

God asked the question Himself before anybody could

There is a short book near the end of the Old Testament about a building project, and in the second chapter God asks something so direct that it is almost uncomfortable.

The temple is being rebuilt and it is not going to be like the old one, and there are old men there who saw the old one.

Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing?Haggai 2:3

Three questions and God asks all three.

He is not being cruel. Look at the third one: does it not seem to you like nothing? That is Him saying the sentence those men had been carrying and had probably not said out loud, and He says it for them, in public, before they have to.

And then, immediately, without a pause and without an argument, He says this.

But now be strong, Zerubbabel, declares the Lord. Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord, and work. For I am with you, declares the Lord Almighty.Haggai 2:4

For I am with you.

He does not answer the comparison. That is the thing to notice. He never says the new house will be better or that the old one was overrated or that they are remembering it wrong.

He names the comparison, lets it stand, and then puts Himself in the room.

Hear where you stand, in a hall with fourteen in it and a memory of a hundred.

You are not standing in a failure. Scripture has God raising the former glory Himself and then saying be strong and work, for I am with you, and the Spirit has never measured a room before deciding to be in it.

And I want to say the careful thing, in the way we say careful things here, which is slowly.

The two silences are real and you were right to distinguish them. A room that used to be loud does carry something a room that was always quiet does not, and anybody who tells you that is imagination has not stood in one.

But notice what the difference actually consists of. It is not in the air. It is in what you know about the room, and what you know is a comparison, and a comparison is a thing you carry in and not a thing that is waiting there for you.

God named that comparison out loud in Haggai and then did not answer it, and the fourteen people who will be in that hall on Sunday are standing in a room that has Him in it whatever it sounded like sixty years ago.

So you are not standing in a failure. Haggai 2 has God raising the former glory Himself, letting the answer stand without arguing with it, and then putting Himself in the room, and the Spirit He poured out has never measured a hall before deciding to be in it.