Most of us have some memories we would like to forget, because of the pain and sadness they caused.  Yet some memories of the past can be delightful, and create a nostalgia where we think nothing in the coming future can rival “what used to be”…

This is “the curse of memory”.  Though we can create great memories and remember how blessed the “glories of the past” were, the curse of memory comes when our present seems bland or bleak.  So instead of a heart focused on what God can do in faith, now and for the future.  We reach back to what He did in the past, and live intoxicated by nostalgia, trying to relive past glories…

This was the Israelites who were old enough to remember the “former glory” of Solomon’s temple.  Now some 60 years later after being judged, the prophet Haggai is preaching a word about rebuilding a temple, that will have greater glory than Solomon’s temple!  Imagine being an elder of the Israelites and witnessing such lavish glory from Solomon’s days, and after hardship, trying to believe for something better?

Yet this is the challenge that faith must conquer.  That real glory has more to do with the presence of God in our lives, than re-living our “past glories”, no matter how great they were.  The need for more of God’s glory, should be more desperately sought as we are challenged by aging, or older children, and greater burdens overall!

The greater glory that Haggai was referring to was of course Christ.  Which reveals that “greater glory” is the presence of God being experienced more in our lives, than material abundance, or even memories of the past.  Because if God’s glory cannot eclipse the mentality “that the greatest glory is in the past”, than how could present and future hope for even greater joy in God be possible?

In His Love, Ld