“And now, I pray you, consider from this day and upward, from before a stone was laid upon a stone in the temple of the LORD: Since those days were, when one came to an heap of twenty measures, there were but ten: when one came to the pressfat for to draw out fifty vessels out of the press, there were but twenty. I smote you with blasting and with mildew and with hail in all the labours of your hands; yet ye turned not to me, saith the LORD. Consider now from this day and upward, from the four and twentieth day of the ninth month, even from the day that the foundation of the LORD’S temple was laid, consider it.“

We humans have a tendency to forget. We forget the lessons of history. We forget the connections between our choices and their consequences. And sometimes, we forget the patterns that shape our lives.

In this passage, Haggai is asking the people to remember – to look backward before they move forward. But he’s not just inviting idle reflection. He’s asking them to notice a pattern, to recognize cause and effect in their spiritual journey.

“Consider from this day and upward,” he says – meaning, look back from this present moment. Remember what life was like before you began rebuilding the temple. Remember the agricultural failures, the disappointing harvests, the strange disconnect between expectation and reality. You’d expect twenty measures but find only ten. You’d hope for fifty vessels of wine but press out only twenty.

These weren’t just random bad luck or natural fluctuations. “I smote you,” says the Lord, with “blasting and mildew and hail.” There was a direct, divine response to their neglect of what mattered most.

But notice that powerful last line: “Yet ye turned not to me.” This is the heart of it all. The purpose of hardship wasn’t punishment for its own sake – it was invitation. An invitation to return, to remember, to realign priorities. But they missed the message embedded in their struggles.

Now, on this twenty-fourth day of the ninth month, as the foundation of the temple is finally being rebuilt, Haggai asks them again to consider. To notice the turning point. To mark this day as the beginning of something new.

What might this mean for us?

I think we all have patterns in our lives where we drift away from what matters most. Maybe it’s not a physical temple we neglect, but perhaps relationships, or purpose, or the deeper values that give our lives meaning. And like the people Haggai addressed, we often experience consequences – a sense of shortage, disappointment, things not quite working out as we hoped.

The invitation here isn’t to wallow in guilt about the past, but to notice the connection between our choices and their outcomes. To recognize that sometimes the difficulties we face aren’t random bad luck, but signposts pointing us back to what truly matters.

And there’s profound hope in this passage too. The very act of noticing, of “considering,” marks the possibility of change. The foundation being laid isn’t just physical – it’s a reorientation of priorities, a return to the center.

Today might be worth considering as a potential turning point in our own lives. What foundations need to be rebuilt? What matters most that we’ve been neglecting? What patterns of disappointment might actually be invitations to return to something essential?

The courage to look backward honestly is often the first step in moving forward differently. Haggai’s invitation to “consider” still echoes today – not as a call to guilt, but as a doorway to renewal.