The latter glory
Weeping at the smaller temple
The temple is rising again, and not everyone is glad. Among the builders stand a few old men who remember the first house, Solomon's house, with its gold and cedar and the glory that filled it like a cloud. They are looking at this second temple going up, plainer, smaller, poorer, and beside the splendor burning in their memory it looks like nothing at all. Some are weeping, and their grief is real. They are old enough to have seen the glory, and what they see now does not compare.
God does not pretend the difference away. Through Haggai He puts the painful question straight to the ones old enough to remember: any of you who saw the former glory, how does this house look to you now? Does it not seem like nothing in your eyes? He names the diminishment instead of denying it, lets the comparison stand. And then He aims past it, to a place their grief cannot yet see: the glory of this latter house, says the LORD of Hosts, will outshine the former, and in this place He will give peace. What looked like a humiliating shrinkage was, in fact, the seedbed of a glory they had no category for.
“Who is left among you who saw this house in its former glory? How do you see it now? Is it not in your eyes as nothing?”
— The LORD, through Haggai — Haggai 2:3 (WEB)
“The latter glory of this house will be greater than the former, says the LORD of Hosts; and in this place I will give peace.”
This is Disorientation as grief over the diminished, the wilderness where the present is measured against a more glorious past and found wanting. The phase does not ask you to deny the loss or pretend the smaller thing is the same. It asks you to let your gaze be turned forward, toward a latter glory that can be greater than the former.
Grief that measures the diminished present against a more glorious past is one of the truest aches of the wilderness, and one of the most paralyzing. You remember the faith you used to have, the fervor, the certainty, the sense of God near. You remember the life you used to live, the marriage, the health, the season when everything was thriving. And you look at what is left, smaller and plainer, and like the old men you could weep, because beside the memory it seems as nothing.
God's word does not scold that grief. He asks the old men how it looks now, and lets them answer honestly. But He will not leave your gaze fixed backward. The latter glory can exceed the former. The thing being rebuilt, humbler than what you lost, may yet hold a glory the golden age never carried, and the peace He gives is not the old days returning but a better thing coming.
The Church remembers its former glory, the fuller pews, the unquestioned authority, the era when the faith sat at the culture's center, and the memory can paralyze it with grief at how diminished it now appears. Haggai's promise is spoken over exactly that ache: the latter glory of the house will be greater than the former. The sweep of history says the same; more than once the Church has shrunk from a grand age into something plainer and discovered, in time, a glory the golden age never held. The recurring rummage sale Phyllis Tickle traced, paraphrased here, is not the death of Christianity but its resizing, and what looks to a watching world like humiliating decline may be the ground God has chosen for a greater glory still ahead. The Body's best days need not be behind it.
What cannot be shaken is the glory God Himself gives, which does not depend on the former splendor that has been removed. The first house and its gold could be shaken and were. The LORD who promises a greater latter glory, and peace in this place, remains. The grandeur you mourn was never the anchor; His abiding glory is.
- What former glory am I measuring my present against, and is the comparison keeping me from building?
- Have I let my gaze stay fixed backward when God is pointing it forward?
- Can I believe the latter glory of this smaller thing may be greater than the former?
Lord, I keep weeping over the glory I remember, and the plain thing before me looks like nothing beside it. You do not scold my grief, but You will not let me face only backward. Turn my eyes to the latter glory that can exceed the former, and give Your peace here. Amen.