I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Zechariah 7-10.

    After the rebuilding of the Temple got under way some of the people came to Zechariah to ask if they should continue to hold days of fasting and mourning to commemorate the destruction of the Temple. Zechariah’s answer was to ask them if it was really for God that they were fasting. Further, he asked them if they were really holding their feast days for God. Weren’t they really doing that because they enjoyed it? That is the question we need to ask ourselves when we conduct the various ceremonies/sacraments we have. When we take Communion, are we doing it for God, or for ourselves? When we baptize new believers, who are we really doing it for?

    When we conduct ceremonies/rituals/sacraments we need to remember that none of them have value to God in and of themselves. Their value to God lies in the degree to which they remind us to judge fairly and treat each other with mercy and compassion. If we get the ceremonies, rituals, and sacraments exactly right, but oppress the fatherless, or widows, or foreigners, or the poor, we would have been better off to not have even tried in the first place. When we take Communion, when we baptize new believers, when we do any of the other religious observances we follow, let us remember to think about showing mercy and compassion to those around us. If in any way the performance of our religious observances make us feel better than others, we are not listening to God, and therefore He will not listen to us.

    I almost stopped after that, but I have to comment on the fact that Zechariah emphasizes the lesson of Haggai from a different perspective. Haggai told the people not to wait until every thing else was taken care of before doing God’s will. Zechariah reminds us to keep on doing God’s will. He reminds the people that before they started on doing God’s will (rebuilding the Temple) there were no jobs and no money. No one was safe because there were bandits everywhere, people were turned against each other. Once they started to do God’s will people became unified and prospered. When we do God’s will, we will find that all of our efforts prosper.