The Jewish exiles had returned to Jerusalem after seventy years of Babylonian captivity. The decree of Cyrus had freed them, granting permission to rebuild the Holy Temple destroyed by the Babylonians. Yet sixteen years later, the House of God remained an empty plot, exposed to the elements, while the people busied themselves with their private affairs. In this context, the prophet Haggai arrived with a message that would shatter their comfortable rationalizations.
What do you tell yourself when you know what must be done but cannot bring yourself to do it?
The people had their answer ready:
On the surface, this sounds reasonable, even pious. They were not rejecting the Temple; they were simply waiting for the right moment. Perhaps they needed better materials. Perhaps the political situation needed to stabilize. Perhaps they required more resources, more support, more certainty. But Haggai saw through these measured words to the rot beneath them.
The prophet’s rebuke cut to the heart of their self-deception:
The people had found time to panel their own homes with fine wood. They had found resources to secure their private comfort. They had managed to overcome every obstacle when it came to their own priorities. But when it came to God’s House, suddenly the conditions were never quite right.
The Sages understood what the people were really waiting for. They wanted cedar wood from Lebanon, the same magnificent material that had graced Solomon’s Temple. They remembered the splendor of that first Temple, its towering pillars and golden furnishings, and they could not stomach the idea of building something lesser. If they could not recreate that glory, they reasoned, better to wait than to build something inadequate. This was not wickedness – it was something more insidious. It was the paralysis of perfectionism disguised as reverence. To paraphrase Voltaire, the perfect had become the enemy of the good. By refusing to accept anything less than ideal, they achieved nothing at all.
Haggai demolished this pretense with devastating clarity:
Notice what the prophet does not say. He does not promise cedar from Lebanon. He does not guarantee that the Temple will match Solomon’s in grandeur. He simply commands: Build with whatever you have. God will accept it. God will be glorified by it. The people’s insistence on perfection was not honoring God – it was insulting Him by suggesting that His presence required luxury to be meaningful.
This is the trap that catches us all. We wait for the ideal circumstances to pursue what matters most. The aspiring writer waits for the perfect idea before putting pen to paper. The would-be philanthropist waits until he has real wealth before giving. The man who knows he should return to God waits for a dramatic spiritual experience to justify the commitment. We convince ourselves that our delay demonstrates seriousness, that we are honoring the goal by refusing to pursue it imperfectly. But Haggai exposes this reasoning as a lie we tell ourselves.
The prophet went further, stripping away even the veneer of good intentions:
The people were not waiting for better wood – they were preoccupied with their own affairs. The delay was not about reverence; it was about priorities. They had time for their own roofs but not for God’s House. They had energy for their own projects but not for His. The wait for perfection was simply an excuse that allowed them to avoid a difficult truth: they cared more about their comfort than His honor.
This is why their harvests were failing and their efforts produced nothing. “You have sown much but bring in little; you eat but are not satisfied; you drink but are not sated; you clothe yourselves but no one is warmed; and he who earns wages earns them for a purse with holes” (Haggai 1:6). When we use perfectionism as an excuse to avoid our true calling, everything else in our lives becomes hollow. The blessings we do pursue slip through our fingers because we have refused the one thing that gives meaning to all the rest.
The book of Ezra records that enemies of Judah sent letters to the Persian authorities attempting to halt the Temple’s construction. Yet Haggai does not mention this opposition. Why? Because even external obstacles become mere excuses when we lack internal commitment. If the people truly wanted to build, God would clear the path. But they had to take the first step with whatever imperfect materials they possessed.
The Jewish people eventually listened to Haggai. They gathered their ordinary wood and built the Second Temple. It lacked the grandeur of Solomon’s building. When the old men who remembered the First Temple saw the foundation of the second, they wept at the comparison. But it was the “House of God.” The Kohanim served there. The nation gathered there for festivals. And it was in that imperfect structure, not the perfect one they had dreamed of, that God’s work continued for centuries.
We face the same choice today. We can wait for ideal circumstances that will never arrive, nursing our beautiful plans while the work remains undone. Or we can gather whatever wood we have available and build. God does not demand perfection – He demands action. He does not require cedar from Lebanon – He requires the willingness to begin with the plain timber we possess. The question is not whether we have the best materials, but whether we will stop making excuses and start building with what we have been given. The House of God will not be raised by those who wait for perfection. It will be raised by those who pick up imperfect tools and begin.
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