It seemed almost impossible. They had lost everything. The Babylonians took their land, crushed their cities, and deported God’s people to a new home a thousand kilometers away.
For seventy years, they lived in that strange land until God brought them back home. Finally, they could rebuild their houses, their lives, and, most importantly, the temple of God in Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, their initial enthusiasm did not last long. They finished their homes, but they hardly touched the temple. In fact, when they started working on it, they encountered so much opposition that they decided that it was going to be too hard and they quit. They had no resources. They had no support from their neighbours. It seemed as if everything was against them and, in their discouragement, they just gave up (Haggai 1:2).
Does any of this sound familiar? Granted, we have not had our land taken away by some foreign army, but, over the last six months, we have experienced loss and a lot of discouragement. Many are under stress financially. We have lost social contacts and our routine has been disrupted to the point that many have begun to feel as though there is no hope. Calls to mental health centres continue to climb.
Where do you turn when life seems out of control? What do you do when you do not know what to do?
Zechariah knew those feelings and asked those same questions. He had been sent to get God’s people working again. How was he going to motivate a bunch of people when they had already given up? Then God provided the answer: “’Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit’, says the Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6). They may not have been able to find any solutions, but God was not defeated. They had a strength that they had not even accessed yet.
It is difficult to trust God in hard times because everything we see leads us to believe that there is no hope. Thankfully, there is more going on than what we see.
Try your hardest. Do your best. But remember, ultimately, your real strength comes from, “…him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us” (Ephesians 3:20).
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