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by Lead Pastor Joel Wight Hoogheem (joel@lordoflife.org)
Whether it’s the story of an athlete returning to form (Comeback Player of the Year) or a company overcoming obstacles (think Apple with the iPod and iPhone or CocaCola coming back from “New Coke”), there’s something inspiring about comeback stories. Making a comeback is nothing new. The Bible contains one of the biggest comeback stories of all time: the return of the people of God from exile.
Bible 101
The Exodus rightly gets a lot of attention when we consider the Old Testament. The exile and return, however, cannot be overlooked in terms of importance to God’s story and relevance to today’s reality. In Ezra 1, we read that God worked through the pagan King Cyrus of Persia to tell the people, “Come back home. Return to me.” God was bringing an end to 70 years of separation and exile. And this comeback did not happen because the people were somehow better, improved versions of themselves. It happened because of God’s great love for them and God’s desire for them to come back home. In Ezra 3, the people are given their top priority upon returning home to Jerusalem: to rebuild the temple. In gratitude for this incredible comeback, you may think the 4
people would gladly set about the task of rebuilding the temple and keep God at the center of their lives. Yet we read in Haggai 1 that the people’s lives got busy and other things took their attention and energy away from God’s command to rebuild the temple. Haggai 1:3-6 says: Then the word of the Lord came by the prophet Haggai, saying: Is it a time for you yourselves to live in your paneled houses, while this house [the temple] lies in ruins? Now therefore thus says the Lord of hosts: Consider how you have fared. You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill; you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes. It turns out the temple wasn’t about the building. It was about keeping God first. Yet the people’s priorities were a mess and they had displaced God from the center of their lives even though God had restored their lives back home. These months of the pandemic have been our exile from normal life. Just as God authored a comeback story in the Old Testament, God will grant us a comeback story, too. We can rejoice and we can learn from our ancestors in
