The Bag with Holes in Apartment 4B

Maria Esperanza worked three jobs in the Bronx — morning shift folding linens at the Marriott on Grand Concourse, afternoons busing tables at a Dominican restaurant on Tremont Avenue, weekends stocking shelves at a bodega on 183rd Street. She earned more in a single month than her mother had seen in a year back in Santiago. Yet every payday felt like pouring water into cupped hands.

The check came Friday. By Monday, the money had scattered — a leak under the kitchen sink, her daughter's school fees, the electric bill that somehow doubled. She once told her pastor, "I keep filling the cup, but somebody drilled a hole in the bottom."

Her pastor opened to Haggai 1:5-6 and read the prophet's ancient diagnosis: "You earn wages, only to put them in a purse with holes in it." He told her the problem in Haggai's day was not laziness. The people worked hard. They planted, harvested, ate, drank, and earned. But they had rebuilt their own paneled houses while the Lord's temple sat in rubble. Their priorities had fractured, and no amount of effort could compensate for what they had neglected.

The Almighty was not punishing their labor. He was exposing its futility apart from Him. When we build everything except what God has asked us to build, the returns will always diminish. The bag will always have holes — until we give careful thought to our ways and put first what the Most High has declared first.